500 words a day on whatever I want

Half Sigma: Spreading the truth through lies

Blogger Half Sigma believes in HBD, human biodiversity, the idea that science has proved that there are hard biological differences between the races in things like intelligence. Africa has an IQ of 70 and all that. The stuff Steve Sailer believes (who blogrolls Half Sigma as part of the Steveosphere).

But trying to spread HBD by arguing the facts has failed. Half Sigma says:

We need to understand that people believe what they believe for emotional reasons rather than logical reasons. Thus rational arguments about all of the scientific evidence in favor of HBD fall on deaf ears. The HBD-denialists have the more powerful emotional arguments. Primarily, they can call people who believe HBD racists, and everyone knows that racists are the most evil people in the world and no one wants to be a racist.

Wait, so HBDers are not racist? What, because they merely look down on “NAMs” (non-Asian minorities) instead of openly hating them? Because they disagree with the people at Stormfront? Because what matters is not whether you are a racist but whether you are called one (by white people)?

He goes on:

The best way to spread the truth of HBD is to convince people that many other people, just like themselves, believe in HBD, but they just keep this knowledge to themselves because of the taboo nature of the topic.

Except that it is not true. What to do? Easy:

The only way to spread the truth of HBD is, ironically, to lie a little. You need to make up stories which demonstrate to people that belief in HBD is common, but just suppressed. And that such belief is not common among skinheads, but rather among smart people, people just like you, people who vote for Democrats and who recycle and eat organic food.

But even that is not enough. More is needed:

Use the power of sock puppets. Don’t get into online arguments with people. It’s much more powerful to simply log in as a different user and say that you agree with yourself, but you would only say so on the internet or you would be fired from your job as a school teacher. This creates the illusion that many people believe in HBD.

Amazing.

While I know that racists come on this blog and just flat-out lie and make up stuff, that they are mainly the ones who use sock puppets, I never thought I would see anyone nakedly push that kind of thing on his blog.

But just because Half Sigma is willing to lie to us and trick us for what he has determined is our own good, that does not mean that all HBDers are like that. On the other hand, neither can we unthinkingly assume that they all argue in good faith. Especially since so few roundly condemned him in the comments.

I wouldn’t characterize people like this as believing in human biodiversity, what they believe in, is that there is a genetic reason for all of human nature. Humans as any other species has biodiversity, that’s what makes evolution possible. We will become a separate species when white folks can no longer reproduce with us and I think some Black folks will think this a good thing. All the crap about IQ and crime will be insignificant when the African is the only survivor of some catastrophe, since they are the most genetically diverse people on earth.

“Blogger Half Sigma believes in HBD, human biodiversity, the idea that science has proved that there are hard biological differences between the races in things like intelligence.”

You do realize the selection of terms is a ploy?

They’ve taken “diversity,” a description rife with liberal connotations and multiculturalist ramifications and usurped it for their own need, their own cause?

However, a true scientist, neutrally observing and able to disregard personal agenda, can state unequivocally that genetic differences do in fact run along racial lines without making value judgments. This is possible. Those who postulate “HBD” which is not really a historically scientifically grounded term, use this data as the basis for decidedly unscientific motives and/or theoretical courses of action.

I’m Hispanic and I have no problem acknowledging my “people” haven’t exactly seized the Horns of Civilization by the horns.

Half Sigma says:and everyone knows that racists are the most evil people in the world and no one wants to be a racist.

Abagond says: Wait, so HBDers are not racist? What, because they merely look down on “NAMs” (non-Asian minorities) instead of openly hating them?

Perhaps you missed the snarky tone of that phrase, Abagond. Half Sigma and the like know that they are racist, they just don’t care; the label of “racist” no longer has meaning to them. They just see themselves as a more enlightened and scientifically justified form of racist.

Perhaps you missed the snarky tone of that phrase, Abagond. Half Sigma and the like know that they are racist, they just don’t care; the label of “racist” no longer has meaning to them. They just see themselves as a more enlightened and scientifically justified form of racist.

Oh, they know it matters.

They are just so busy living out their extended time-oriented fetish that they believe they are the honorable forebearers of an unpleasant truth.

In this strange respect, they welcome antagonism.

They believe evolution is on their side.
They believe they are martyrs which is certainly a powerful perspective (witness the rest of the world).

I don’t know if there are differences between races beyond appearance (and I highly doubt that any differences are along the same lines that we define “race” in America by, which is fairly arbitrary, or that they’re set in stone rather than generalizations), but what always bothers me about this is that even if they are- they don’t make anyone better or worse than anyone else.
I wish more privileged people could actually get the “Just because you have different strengths and weaknesses than someone else doesn’t make you better or worse than that person” that we keep spouting on afterschool specials. It’s really not fair because we can’t value the differences in strengths on their own merit- just on whether or not white people find them valid.

Obvious that they lie. even an elementary book on their supposed science like “What it means to be 98%” chimpanzee” disproves all that BS. Red herring? None of these HBDers are geneticists, a big red flag because they use genetics in their arguments.

That was funny, even though nothing new. Josef Göbbels said once: don’t lie a little, lie big and people want to believe in it. 😀

There is no doubt among real scientists that there is only one race of humans in this planet. I find it hilarious that it pisses these guys off so much that they will do litterally anything to convince themselves that “It ain’t so”. 😀 They even tell each other how to lie!!! 😀

This guy must be the self appointed guardian of HBD and this is his strategy?? 😀 c’mooooon! This must be at least funny! 😀

I am a used car saleswoman. Should any of you lovely folk need medical advice on heart conditions, hemorrhoids, or brain lesions, I would be more than happy to give it to you for free! If these people can do it with no scientific background, then why can’t I? Besides I read about these things somewhere, plus my neighbour suffers from all of the above maladies. In effect, I have second hand experience in curing what ails one! If they can do it, why can’t I? At least I’m helping people. Besides which, there’s a sucker born every minute!

None of these HBDers are geneticists, a big red flag because they use genetics in their arguments.

If these people can do it with no scientific background, then why can’t I? Besides I read about these things somewhere, plus my neighbour suffers from all of the above maladies. In effect, I have second hand experience in curing what ails one! If they can do it, why can’t I?

And Sarah Palin could see Russia from her house. So naturally, that made her an expert on foreign relations.

I like how people are using words in their arguments, even build a whole (fake) science on them without actuallys knowing anything about them. There is NO human biodiversity. There is no biodiversity within any species whatsoever. The word “biodiversity” describes the diversity of SPECIES, ie of everything living. Humans are one species, therefore great fluctuations in between races can only be at the surface, certainly not something as substantial as the potential for intelligence. To be more exact, amongst the eukaryotic animals (bacteria and protozoans are another story) only the dogs have the freakishly large diversity within one species.

Can we vote for people that don’t have any idea about science not being allowed to use it, please?

There is NO human biodiversity. There is no biodiversity within any species whatsoever. The word “biodiversity” describes the diversity of SPECIES, ie of everything living.

The definition of biodiversity in your second sentence is the most common one but biodiversity can also apply to genetic variations within a species. More commonly I have heard it called genetic diversity within a species but as you can see from the papers below it is not incorrect (although less common..) to use the term for genetic variants within a species.

Moving away from humans, look at the subjects of the following papers:

“Biodiversity of pig breeds from China and Europe estimated from pooled DNA samples: differences in microsatellite variation between two areas of domestication.”

“The study showed that observable traits in domestic dogs are defined by a small number of genetic variants. By contrast, studies of humans and other species, including laboratory animals and domestic plants, have found that common traits, such as body size and lipid levels, are the result of many genetic variants working together.

How do the researchers explain the pattern in dogs of a small number of gene variations having such large effect? One reason is that many modern breeds were created during the Victorian Era when breeders selected particular novelty traits. The researchers describe some events in the breeding of dogs as bottlenecks, where a breed is derived from a small number of founders. This simpler genetic architecture provides unique insights into the potential of evolutionary change under domestication.”

Not to sound funny but aren’t dogs also prized because of certain traits? For example, you will hear how some dogs are smart or not so smart. Or good with children. Things like that. So if a dog is a dog and a human is a human why are humans all 100% equal in intelligence but not dogs?

Does my question make any sense? And yea, I suck at science so a good simple explanation would be needed. thanks! 🙂

While I admit that the term “biodiversity” is sometimes being used to describe genetics within a species, it is, scientifically speaking, not the correct term, while it fits from a grammatical point of view. We have the same occurence with the word “parasite”, where, for example, within the traditional parasitology, for example represented by Germany, the term is only being used to describe eukaryotes, while especially the anglosaxon world also describes intracellular bacteria as “parasitic” and sometimes even speaks of viruses as “parasites”, even though they aren’t, strictly speaking, a living thing. But to make matters short, I concede that in certain regards you can use biodiversity to describe species, though you shouldn’t try to base a science on the usage of the word in that regard.

@Mei Ly

That was my point, actually. Dogs are the only species where you really can say that certain races have tremendously different phenotypes that also include the standard intellect. This can’t be found in any other higher animal, especially not in humans. To make it easier: A black person from Somalia, never having visited a school and having to do hard manual labour since the age of six, might as well have an IQ of 70 (as flawed as the IQ scale is, let’s just take it).

However, if you had taken the same person and had brought it up in a Western country, with high medical and educational standards, that IQ would be absolutely comparable to that of white people, let’s say in the nineties. The difference of intelligence withing human individuals might well be genetic to a certain degree. But the difference in human RACES is all down to different standards of living. This is opposed to dogs.

Or, to paint a picture: You can expect a Chihuahua to be less smart than a Saint Bernhard, because the brain of the Saint Bernhard is about ten times as big. There is no case in humans where one race has a brain that is even only half as big as another race’s. You may find a decrease in size by maybe five percent, but in these small volumes there won’t be any noticeable difference in intellect (as proven by the generally slightly bigger brain that men have in comparison to women, yet the IQ range in both sexes is equally spread).

The problem with the IQ measurement is that it is not the slightest bit reliable. As an example, I can score extremely high at it. Not because I am exceptionally smart, but because I like to do the numerical, spacial, etc. tests sometime swhen I’m bored, not unlike sudoku. This means that you can practice for these tests, making them in the end quite unreliable. They also don’t test anything beyond spacial, numerical, and logical thinking. Matter of fact, you could be the most brilliant talker on the planet that can convince anybody on the planet to do everything you’d ask of them, and you could still score incredibly low on an IQ test.

I, personally, would say IQ tests are only slightly more scientific than phrenology (the measurement of the areas on your head to define your characterstics). The problem is that they have this air of credibility around them, making it possible to put a figure to an in itself immeasurable feature (because, what IS intelligence?).

@zemo: righ on the money! I know guys who have scored low on IQ tests (for one reason or another) and who are very, very sharp. And successful in their professional lives as well as at their domestic lives, so…

And of course, I know at least a full company of finnish soldiers who scored low, the whole lot of them 😀

IQ tests were, I believe, trying to remember that book “What it means to be 98% Chimpanzee”, only originally designed to identify possible developmental delays in very young children,2-6 year olds, particularly if they suffered illness very young but survived it. The French scientist who designed it never imagined that in the United States it would be used to measure someone’s intelligence for the rest of their natural lives, because that can obviously change based on environmental factors like upbringing and education.

Intelligence, as many people here have pointed out is not something quantifiable(not sure if that is a word) you can’t measure how intelligent someone is, because to begin with you would have to be able to define intelligence very specifically and that can’t be done because intelligence, like many words that define brain functions is an umbrella term that describes several properties of thought(communication, reasoning, understanding) working in tandem.

You can’t have more or less of it. You can exhibit greater proficiency or ability in certain areas of it than others, but thats about it. The discipline that tends to fall back on IQ is that historically inaccurate as hell, every type of ism perpetuating, pseudoscience: psychology.

How do HBDers get around the Flynn effect? if average IQ scores in America are rising on an average of 3 points per decade, that would seem to suggest that IQ is highly influenced by societal factors.

Do HBDers believe that Americans are evolving biologically at such an incredible rate that we tac on 3 IQ points per decade? I think that’s a much faster rate of evolution than Darwin had in mind. At that rate in 330 years the average IQ will be 100 points higher!

OR maybe there is something going on here besides evolution and genetics that would explain the differences in IQ.

Ah, I see Abagond’s taken my HBD blog recommendations and checked em out. Good! We need more of us to bring serious and rigorous questioning and critique of the HBDers.

I know HS fairly well, in that I’ve read his blog for about 3 years or so now. He’s a Jewish Man from NYC, and is quite keen to discuss, aside from HBD, Class. From what I gather he works in IT but got a law degree from a school out in Arizona, and seems a bit troubled by the fact that he wasn never the Wunderkind his people often turn out to be.

Speaking of which, HS and other Jews have to contend with the fact that HBD venues are often havens for Stormfront types; its gotten so bad that entire brouhahas were created over this at the AmRen conferences, where Jewish speakers such as Columbia U’s Michael Levin would be there to speak, and Stormfronters would take umbrage at his and other Jews’ appearance there at the event. You see, because Ashkenazi Jews are considered the smartest of White folks as a group per IQ, they are often the focus of anti-Semitic vitriol on the part of White Nationalist groups, like Stormfront. If you read Sailer regularly, you’ll see them point up from time to time over there, ragging on the jews and so forth.

Yet, Jews like Half Sigma and Levin don’t seem to have much problem dumping on “NAMs”. Go figure.

As for HS being a racist, if he truly wasn’t bothered by it he wouldn’t use an internet screename. so that really says it all, doesn’t it?

All that said, I still think the best way to deal with the HBDers is to bring them out into the light of day, and to debate them point for point. In my view the way to do this is not to get bogged down in an esoteric debate over arcane scientific errata, but rather some nitty gritty public policy discussion, since HBDers want to use what they consider to be science to make changes in public policy. Here’s how I approach it – note how, to date, NO HBDer has actually responded, in full (Sagat):

HBD As Public Policy: Questions For The True Believers

OK, so let’s consider a few of the things HBDers want to see happen, although many of them are not often stated explicitly:

1. End Affirmative Action: really, what the HBDers mean here by this term, is to end any forms of preferences or quotas that pertain to Blacks, in education and hiring. The more prestigious and elite the better. The HBD argument goes, that since African Americans are on average less intelligent than Whites, it then follows that the majority of Blacks don’t really belong in the nation’s best schools and getting the cushiest of jobs because they aren’t truly qualified for them.

The problem with this argument is that it turns a blind eye to the decades, if not centuries long practice of good ole fashioned nepotism – those very same prestigious, elite schools and firms engage in blatant nepotism all the time, by seeing to it that the children of the wealthy and well-connected get in and do well. A very prominent example of this was George W. Bush, important for our discussion because the vast majority of HBDers online at least, are at the very least moderately if not stridently to the Right politically. Please note that, for example, while Steve Sailer has railed on and on about Affirmative Action over the years, he has never said anything about GWB getting over on essentially the same things that he takes issue wrt Blacks. Simply put, the HBDers are cool with preferences and quotas, so long as those receiving them are White, and by this I mean, non-Jewish White. Again, note the fact that the single biggest beneficiary of AA has been White Women – no big hew and cry from Sailer et al.

2. Speaking of the above, the next question we have to consider is that of Regression to the Mean: those of you out there of a more scientific bent will know what I mean by that term so no need for me to go rehashing it here. The problem is the HBDers never seem to want to admit that just because one has high IQ and even successfully mates with another person who is the same, thier progeny may not necessarily have the same IQ; indeed, the odds are that they won’t. The Ivy League is chockfull of mediocre kids of very smart people, who never go on to light up the sky with their supposed greatness by birth gifts. Actually, its often the reverse, its just that being among the elite brings with it the ability to cover up otherwise embarrassing factoids about yourself or those close to you. The HBDers never address this, nor do they address the fact the country has millions of Dumb White People – what are we to do wtih them? The current discussion stays mired in racial politics, partly for the reasons Chuck laidout, that there is such a thing as Leftist racial interests, but als because its an intense area of focus for the HBDers among themselves and in their own right. Even their “bible” the Bell Curve, which I’ve discussed at length at my blog, is viewed in a racial lens, when it truth a miniscule portion of the book was devoted to the topic and the authors were discussing the social implications of IQ bifurcation along class lines, primarly among WHITES. but neither side of the debate, seems to care about this little known fact about TBC. And the beat goes on.

3. Wrt the public school debate, how can we honestly say, with a straight face, that what John Ogbu discovered in his research, that the kids of prosperous and solidly middle and upper middle class Blacks consistently scored lower on tests than markedly poorer Whites and Asians, is booty? And, how can we simply turn a blind eye to the fact that school districts like Newark NJ and Washington DC are paying small fortunes to “educate” Black kids, with so little to show for it? Is it racist to merely point this out? Must we engage in diversionary debates about the Iraq War to honestly question if the monies being spent on such supposedly educational efforts are worth it? And, what of the potential evidence that what the HBDers are saying is true, that most Blacks simply aren’t as smart as most Whites or Asians – does that mean that they still shouldn’t be taught to read and write? See, I think emotionalism and deepseated partisan/ideological bias gets in the way of cleareyed questioning of the issues here. And there are, real issues, to confront.

4. Speaking of the Bell Curve, one of its “solutions” was to restrict the ability of single moms to breed on the dole. The book came out circa 1994, and in 1996, then President Bill Clinton, with the aid of a GOP led Congress, passed Welfare Reform, which made TBC’s suggestions along these lines a moot, at best, point. However, among the HBDers, this remains a hot topic – hence constant recourse to “eugenics” selective breeding that is state sponsored and/or enforced. The HBDers say that the problem is that the dumb are outbreeding the smart, and that one way to address this is to find ways to curtail the former’s ability to breed.

But aside from the facts I’ve noted above, what the HBDers never address is the fact that the Smart White People are dwindling in numbers, and they haven’t figured out how to deal with this. Some of them make passing allusions to things like “affordable family formation”, but the real deal is the fact that they haven’t figured out how to convince Smart White Women, to forego the elite university experience, the high prestige career experience, the Sex And The City experience, and be cool with popping out no less than three kids, starting around age 21 or so, with Jeremy the STEM Guy. Because even if they could get the dumb “NAMs” (Non-Asian Minority; a euphemism for Black and Brown/Hispanic people) to breed considerably less than they do, it still wouldn’t address what I’m talking about here. Simply put, there are enough Smart White People to go around. But the HBDers, for whatever reason, simply haven’t addressed this. And, put all that together with the documented fact that no state has ever been successful in getting its so-called better sections, however one may define them, into breeding MORE. They’ve been successful in getting them to breed LESS, but not MORE. No society has been able to pull this off. Not. A. Single. One. History isn’t on the HBDers side here. How do they explain this, and what is it about their plan, assuming they have one or two, that’s markedly different?

5. And I’ve addressed this A LOT on my blog – what are the downsides of being born on the right end of the bell curve? The book, the Bell Curve itself, seems only to address the left end of the curve, but they say nothing about the right end, and the reason is that it is assumed and taken almost as gospel that there IS no downside. And that I find to be fascinating in its hubris. Nature says otherwise.

For example, we know that having too high an IQ is correlated with reduced ability to socialize and empathize with others; it also goes hand in hand with reduced fertility/virilty. Hands up out there, all the ladies reading this who would like to spend their lives with John Nash or Sir Issac Newton? Brilliant Men they may have been, but by all accounts, they were really, really difficult to live with. Then, consider James Watson – his kid is schizoid. See my “regression” comments above. And those are just a few of the downsides that we know of – as any social scientist knows well, we tend to spend an inordinate mount of time and money, poking and prodding the poor and presumably dumb, but very little time doing the same to those who are deemed smart and rich.

6. Michael Levin, in his book on HBD, suggests toward the end, a stepping up of racial profiling on the part of the police, since in his view, it is proven that Blacks, particularly Black Men, have a higher propensity towards violence and violent crime than anyone else in society. Of course this brings up questions of violations of civil liberties. How do the HBDers square these seemingly two irreconcilable notions? Whether we like it or not, its one thing for a cabbie in Big City America to pass on picking up Black Men regardless of age or attire or even time of day for fear of even a sizable minority of them being known for sticking up and even murdering cabbies; its another to have such a view as a matter of public policy and enforced by the police. HBDers don’t explicitly state whether they’re in favor of such measures outside of Levin, nor have they expressed their views with how they can justify it under current American law and customs.

These are just a few of the many questions I have for the HBDers, that always seem to get lost in the shuffle, due to hyperbole and emotionalism on both sides of the aisle, along with arid and boring to tears esoteric discussions over arguing whether this or that is science or not, or whether this or that source is authentic enough, and so forth. We never really drill down to the nuts and bolts, rubber hits the road hard questions that need to be asked of the HBDers, and I think they kind of like that, because they never have to actually put their ideas out there on the line to be scrutinized; they can always claim ideological martyr status for being shouted down as being iconoclasts in the public square, by left leaning blank slatists who are little more than intellectual frauds. I say, let’s have the debate on HBD, on what it would actually mean in public policy terms. Let’s see how the HBDers intend to address the problems of our time, and indeed things they see as problems. So long as we continue to quibble over how many angles can dance on the head of a pin, we’ll never get to those very important questions.

Hopefully, this comment(s) by me will get the conversation – a truly meaningful one in my view – moving in the right direction.

Of course they wouldn’t be to eager to answer questions on how they would go about institutionalizing their views. They would have none to caterwaul to in regards to their ‘superiority’. Perhaps they are to ‘smart’ to really go the distance or are simply above the fray. I would hazard a guess and say that they lean towards eugenics. However, what is one to do with eugenics?

After you get rid of the ‘less intelligent’ groups, there remains the ‘smart ones’. You then begin to cull the dumber ones amongst the ‘smart’ ones. You will then end up with folks akin to Brainiac’. As you said, a lot of these ‘extra smart’ people are sorely lacking in empathy and social skills. They sound like sociopaths actually. Being self-centered and misogynistic, they may not want to breed in the first place as ‘they threw away the mold’ when they created these people. Perhaps they are just plain too smart to breed as they already realize the labour, toil, and expense that would be incurred. Hey maybe they are smart!

No, these HBDers ain’t going to propose a complete overhaul of the system to rid the world of the dumber groups. If they did that, who would be around to make them feel better about themselves? They would then turn on themselves as I alluded to in the above paragraph. In the end, there would be no-one left except the lower beasts who they equally disdain unless those beast are named ‘Fluffy’. Fluffy will then revert to his/her savage nature and proceed to kill off the lesser species. So what we have is a vicious cycle. It would appear that the HBDers ain’t to smart after all!

For my part, I feel engaging in a serious debate with HBDers is best done by those with expertise in the subjects they’re bringing up. Should someone start quoting anthropological theory that supports HBD, I’ll be happy to discuss the issue, but evolutionary biology is not my field, and it seems disingenuous to attempt to explain why HBD is a debunked pseudo-science of racists when I’m no expert in the field. Rather, I’d prefer to leave that to people like Stephen Jay Gould and other real scientists who can determine the “facts” from the facts.

As for discussing the policy implications of HBD, I have to ask: to what end? What possible outcome could be gained from asking racists what they think should be done in our country using HBD as a foundation. Also, I think it plays into the Faux News problem of giving a platform to hate speech that is not only extremely radical but also extremely rare among the general population. It’s like putting a Klan member on the same stage with a social worker and asking them to talk about “the issues”. One is a fanatical believer unable to see past their twisted cosmology, and the other is just doing a job.

However, I do also support efforts like Abagond’s and Eurasian’s (among various others) who as laymen attempt to show what HBD is actually about, and explain it those of us who know it’s wrong, but can’t always explain it properly.

So ultimately, whether discussing HBD is productive or not, I leave up to the individual — but as for me, I find it a waste of time when I’ve already found the answers elsewhere.

@ Zek
I think people who do have a scientific background, like my sister who is raising a child and pursuing her MD& PHd, don’t seriously have time to debate these people. These HBDers people have to be Geneticists or some type of scientists for me to take any claim they make about supposed genetics seriously, and they have to have published several peer reviewed papers.

They haven’t: because this isn’t science. HBders always say,” oh well this person proved it for me”, and do like Chuck foolishly did once and point to some random paper that he got off of pub med that he didn’t even read that actually said the exact opposite of what he was trying to say( He couldn’t have read it, or even analyzed the data because it was in research database not open to the public, he just basically dug up some abstracts and a book that was published in the 1980s on Google books that also contradicted the racist BS he was trying to sell.) When I pointed this out to him at first he thought it was my research but then I reminded him that it was HIS source not mine. He then back peddled badly and said that there was alot of research that proved his point, he just didn’t feel like looking for it. He also deleted my comments that made this error obvious it’s still pretty funny to read the exchange though. He threatened to make a post to me which he still hasn’t and probably never will do. He lied, they all lie.

Because these people are NOT scientists, and until they present some credentials proving that they have studied and mastered so biomedical science and most importantly statistics at a technical institute of some kind they are not, as Chuck so brilliantly demonstrated, even capable of analyzing other peoples data, because they are apparently too lazy, they just “know” that they are right and science that they don’t even understand or can even explain proves them right. I would hate to see them actually argue this with a geneticist or an anthropologist. Most would probably back down or but still continue to believe this stuff even if a geneticist told them opposite.

Besides it’s not about them being scientifically accurate or proficient: they use scientific words to lend themselves a thin veneer of credibility so that people won’t question them. It’s alot like the NAZI’s. I don’t know why people can’t see this.

You can read my comments to him on his Webpage here. It starts at 2:09pm if you actually care, its finals week for me so I can understand if you ain’t got the time.

It’s still a pretty funny exchange, they way it originally happened the error was much more obvious and it took him a long time to figure out his error.

Chuck: Your source seems spurious. This source says that black men have lower testosterone levels and we all know that they have higher testosterone levels than Asians.

And then I said:
Thats YOUR source, YOUcited it.( He deleted this comment after he figured out his error.)

Me: LMFAO!(also deleted this one and just left the one where I reposted his links)

The comments that he left don’t make him look any less like someone who will tell any lie just to win an argumentbut his deletion of those two comments make him look less clumsy about it.

He posted some other article about children but I didn’t even bother to look after that. Why even bother giving these people the time? He also became more openly racist to as he frequently is on his own blog

I read your profile. If you really are a computer programmer located in Uptown Manhattan, then you and Half Sigma have a lot in common. I believe that he is also a computer programmer living in Uptown Manhattan! How coincidental. In any case, you two probably have similar backgrounds, so perhaps you can meet him in person. Or maybe he works at the same place as you. That would really be something!

I really shouldn’t post this because next thing I know you will probably be reading my blog and attacking me. Is this King figure who has been commenting on your blog the same King figure that I talked to a few a months ago? If so, that would be really fascinating.

There are lots of dumb white people. I write all the time about how dumb, boring, and lazy white people are compared to East Asians.

No matter how hard it is assailed, demonized, conveniently – falsely labeled and ultimately denied by the opposing protectorate liars, the fact is that so-called “human biodiversity” or “HBD” as it is being dubbed is an absolute fact and there are monumental differences between races.
To claim that one race is equal in its intellectual capacity, be same in the face of mundane, moreover abstract process to that of another is an outright lie, period.

Asian of Reason, thanks for that lovely picture at your blog! Also the link to Peter Heater or what ever his name is(I didn’t really notice after watching the video of him masturbating!) Again thanks! Got any more? One of the things that fascinate me about the HBDers, is their obsession with pecker size!. From what I gather, most men would rather have a bigger pecker than a brain. I have gleaned this from numerous spam in my email, promoting penis enlargement,, internet, and talking to men in general who love boasting about, and comparing their pecker size such as your post alludes to. If it’s any consolation, it’s not the size of the boat, but the motion in the ocean! However, many women do enjoy a larger pecker for ascetic reasons. But then they enjoy shopping also. I wonder if the HBDers can explain the correlation between shopping and IQ. What gene controls shopping?

When (pseudo)scientific research is motivated by sociopolitical ideologies it is questionable from the beginning. The staunchest defenders of HBD are obsessed with flashing political statements in their argumentation. There always has to be at least one mention of “the liberals” or “lefties” etc, usually strategically placed where their reasoning becomes the least credible or proves to be patchy. You will never find such mention in serious scientific publications. For instance something like “… and what the creationists don’t want to understand is that …” in a paper about evolution theory.

Going through such efforts in trying to prove the superiority of one group over another obviously comes with an agenda. And it’s not a scientific one.

Now social science is a totally different animal. It lives off opinions and a multitude of possible interpretations. The “racial” scientists however have no qualms about throwing genetics, economics, outdated IQ tests and imaginary concepts such as “innate racial personality” into one pot. Give it a good stir and present the most populist, commercially viable and the most sensationalist “conclusions” to the public.

All those efforts would be of much better use in genetic research for cancer, AIDS and many other disorders that have an already proven strong genetic component. All this is still in its infancy. It’s actually a waste that those “racial” geneticists have nothing more relevant to do than to chase after elusive pieces of evidence for their own belief system and repeatedly debunked theories from long past centuries. It’s actually no surprise that most of the serious scientists are sick and tired of wasting time on debunking those claims over and over again, hence their relative silence and seemingly acceptance of the claims.

There’s so much research that still needs to be fine-tuned and that does have uncontested evidence for its validity, such as the influence of nutrients on brain performance – or should I say intelligence? (a clear worldwide definition is yet pending) – in child age when the brain is still developing. Or the mother’s health which is very important too. Just look at kids of sick or substance abusing mothers. They do tend to have more cognitive deficiencies than their peers. There’s more research needed on how proper nutrition and health can be assured for all mankind in an efficient manner.

The Flynn effect, which is a worldwide phenomenon btw, has often been quoted together with the overall improvements in nutrition, general health and public awareness. We also see that in increasing life expectancy and a number of other improvements in human lives. Those are simple observations but logical conclusions.

A serious scientist will try to extrapolate conclusions from findings how to improve a situation that is deficient. Making definitive declarations out of shaky evidence is not science. The statement “it’s all genetics folks, nothing you can do about it” requires blind belief from the uninitiated. The individuals who are the most likely to follow such declarations are… yes, you guessed it. They’re not scientists. They’re political ideologists and demagogues.

Just say you hate n*ggers and be done with it! No need to affix a pseudo-science to your racism because that is all it boils down to. For example, i hate liver and onions, I just proclaim it, I don’t look for scientific reasons as to why I do in order to explain my dislike of liver. I just hate it. You should do the same. Quit hiding behind this pseudo-science!

Hi Zek,
Been keeping abreast of your blog, btw. Looks like I got my work ahead of me… 😉

Bu to address your comments here – there are very good reasons why the HBDers can and should be addressed. One of them is because of the fact that quite a few people agree with them. SJG’s works never sold as much as Murray and Herrenstein’s The Bell Curve, which, some 16 years after its printing, is still being discussed and still inspiring work here abroad. Case in point? The recent release and controversey surrounding Germany Abolishes Itself, by Thilo Sarrazin. Look it up. Here we have a book that was a runaway bestseller, in the land where the Holocaust took place, of all things. How could that happen? And even more to the point – thinking the unthinkable – could the author be saying something, that’s true?

See, so long as we do what you’re suggesting – basically a combination of ignoring them/clonwning-ridiculing them – we never actually drill down to the hard questions my post above speaks to. Now, listen closely, you’re about to learn something very important…

Above, and several times previously on this blog and elsewhere, I’ve made the point that for all the talk of eugenics on the part of the HBDers – almost always focused on getting the “NAMs” to breed less – notive how they NEVER, address how to get the putatively smarter people to breed MORE.

This same oddity happens in Sarrazin’s book – which is indeed rather interesting, since Germany is among quite a few countries in the EU that has been experiencing a Baby Bust – in fact, among the EU’s Big Three countries, Germany has seen an all time low in births among its Smart White Native Female population. It’s at its lowest point since the end of WW2, in fact, and this has been discussed quite a bit in the German news of late.

The next part that is really interesting is that back during WW2, Hitler and the Nazis implemented hard eugencis programs, so they could create that pure Aryan race that Hitler dreamt of taking over the world. It failed – badly – and do you want to know why?

Because they couldn’t convince enough Women to drop their panties, assume the position and do their part for Aryans and Country. That’s why.

Just Like Joseph Staling couldn’t get enough good Soviet Women to have 6 babies or more.

Just like Singapore can’t pay enough Smart Asian Women to forego their prestigious jobs and become Baby Mamas.

And now, in present day Germany, amidsts real problems they’re having along multicultural lines – remember, its president, the Chancellor Angela Merkl recently declared multiculturalism an utter failure – it still cannot pay enough of its own best and brightest, native born Women, to reproduce.

That’s a part of the HBD debate that gets left out, that doesn’t get addressed per your strategy, etc, et al – and that’s why I maintain that my approach is best. Because it forces the HBDers to confront these kinds of historical facts and puts the ball in their court as to how they think they can address them.

But there’s another reason why I say your approach to this issue (among a great many others, btw; since our first encounter earlier this fall, I’ve had the chance to do a bit of reading up on you, don’t ya know), is this…

It’s because NOT engaging people you disagree with in the public square of debate, is not only anti-intellectuall, its ultimately anti-Western and anti-American. A big principle of Western and by extension American values, is that you hash the issues of the day out with those who have the hutzpah to bring them to the public square. This notion of attempting to ignore, while also mocking those who make the arguments, appealing to authorities who themselves have been rigorously questioned and so forth, is an affront to all that our society is built upon. And this is especially true online and in the blogosphere – we are very used to hearing and dealing with only those with whom we agree. I don’t need to tell you where that leads – to a kind of ghetto, where one’s thinking isn’t challenged or sharpened, where ideas grow stagnant and dull, and where anything meaningful gets lost in a cult of personality. This is why I welcomed you and Chuck’s disagreement with me when I wrote my post To Swirl With Anger (which, by the way, I’ll be revisiting when my new blog is back up and running – I’ve since gathered much more hard evidence to prove my case – so most definitely stay tuned), because that’s the whole point of debate over lively and provocative issues. And if you will recall, I made the point that what was regrettable, was that you in particular, never actually dealt with what I actually said and dealt with it on its merits – instead you attacked the person – me – and distorted my positions. This is the strong tendency to do this on the Left, although as we can see here with Half Sigma and others, and which I’ve been writing about for sometime now, the Right are no strangers to this as well.

The question of HBD isn’t going away, Zek – in part because it is indeed rooted in some truth. it deserves an honest airing out in the light of day, in the public square of debate, both virtual and otherwise.

A serious scientist will try to extrapolate conclusions from findings how to improve a situation that is deficient. Making definitive declarations out of shaky evidence is not science. The statement “it’s all genetics folks, nothing you can do about it” requires blind belief from the uninitiated. The individuals who are the most likely to follow such declarations are… yes, you guessed it. They’re not scientists. They’re political ideologists and demagogues.”…

Kwamla,
I disagree with Femi and those who take that view; ultimately, science is very much intertwined with politics for one thing, and for another no HBDer is saying that they are scientists; they are taking some understandings about IQ and other measures and applying them to varying racial groups and then applying that to public policy matters. Personally, I think its a much more useful, and constructive, use of time to consider that debate, than to merely shout it down because we don’t like what’s being said.

@ obsidian
That doesn’t mean the politics determine what is scientifically true. If that was the case we would still be learning that the earth is the center of the universe, just because Christians thought that it was and placed Galileo under house arrest for offending the church by pointing out that they were wrong. Politics determine what scientific facts are promoted to the general public, see the Eugenics movement, but politics do not determine what is or isn’t scientifically proven.

That is a big logical fallacy, that HBDers expect people to ignore. This isn’t shutting a debate down because you don’t like what’s being said, this is shutting someone up who doesn’t know what the hell they are talking about.

Doing what you suggest is merely playing into their hands which is exactly what they want people to do. Once they find a foothold for doubt they can use rhetoric and lies to make people question what they know to be true. That is what Hitler did. He made people question even basic facts by telling them half truths that appealed to their unspoken biases and it just carried on from there.

It is a waste of time even debating with these people, you can’t argue facts against beliefs. People believe what they want and they will always use confirmation bias to justify what they want to be true. If HBDers want to believe that people are inherently inferior, just like people in the Eugenics movement did, then nothing will convince them otherwise except possibly time.

Before the Holocaust people like Winston Churchill supported eugenics, afterward no one would seriously promote it in the public sphere. The eugenics movement justified the holocaust so by association it’s one of those archaic racism justifications. But the attitudes that perpetuated the Eugenics movement haven’t died and the attitudes that you talk about politics intertwining with science or misrepresenting or lying about scientific data with no proof to justify a political beliefare still alive and well.

As Galileo learned after he died in prison, the truth does not set you free, particularly if it is a truth powerful people oppose. Time proved him right on the worlds terms. But that is one of numerous examples of why science and politics should NEVER mix. Politics inhibits science and human intellectual development.

@ obsidian
People may believe that the earth is the center of the universe and they may find any justification for that belief that they want but that doesn’t change the fact that the SUN is the center of the universe. All that talking just obscures a simple fact and plays into the hands of propagandists, they want the facts to be obscured because confusion breeds fear and insecurity and it make people easier to controland in many cases it destroys lives.

Look at how long tobacco companies denied that cigarettes cause Cancer? They bought plenty of research studies to back up their assertion and protect their business interests, but it was all for nothing because cigarettes do cause cancer and emphysema and a host of other health problems.

Politics and science should never mix! Just because they often do mix that doesn’t make it right.

Laura,
Please go back to what I said in my reply to Zek; I specifically mentioned Germany, TODAY, in 2010 – how there, a Man named Thillo Sarrazin has a runawy bestseller called Germany Abolishes Itself. You might want to look it up. Its dealing with the same questions The Bell Curve dealt with 16 years ago, and like TBC is selling like hotcakes among the German people. Its leader, Angela Merkl, was declared multiculturalism, an utter failure. Sarrazin used to work for Germany’s largest bank, Bundesbank, and was pushed out of his job for saying out loud what a significant numebr of Germans are actually thinking – and if we’ve learned anything from history, is that when you push heretic thoughts underground, you make them only stronger, not weaker. We have clear and present evidence, both in the form of The Bell Curve as well as the German version of it, that these aren’t willy nilly notions or ideas. And they should be given the forum to be heard out.

Science has, and always will, take a back seat to politics – this is true no matter where you go on the planet. Any scientist worth his or her salt will freely admit this fact of life. So again, no matter how you slice it, we come back to my public policy focus of HBD, which reminds me…

Again, notice how the HBDers simply flatout refuse to engage me on the questions I raised, which not only legitimate, but based on their own reasoning. THAT is how you deal with them, Lara – not shouting them down or ignoring them or making them martyrs. As I told Zek and I’ll tell you, to do otherwise is to besmirch the very ideas that our democracy what it is – which, last time I heard, was a heck of a lot closer to beliefs, than science.

Science has, and always will, take a back seat to politics – this is true no matter where you go on the planet.

Really? So the earth didn’t become the center of the universe until the Catholic Church acknowledged it as such? Listen to how you sound here.

I’m a racist but I need a heart transplant and the only person who has one is a black man. Does that mean I’ll let myself die because I believe in segregation and I won’t take the black man’s heart? Will science take a backseat to politics when it’s important?

Hell, no.

You can ignore facts but that doesn’t change how they affect you. One way or another you have to face them. That’s where cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias come in.

Again, notice how the HBDers simply flatout refuse to engage me on the questions I raised, which not only legitimate, but based on their own reasoning. THAT is how you deal with them, Lara – not shouting them down or ignoring them or making them martyrs. As I told Zek and I’ll tell you, to do otherwise is to besmirch the very ideas that our democracy what it is – which, last time I heard, was a heck of a lot closer to beliefs, than science.

Okay as i said before, putting something into perspective is not shouting someone down or ignoring them.

I find scientific claims from people who are not scientists suspect. Most people given the harm that this has caused in the past and continues to cause are wise to be wary or question claims that people of dubious credentials make.
Most of the so called claims that these HBDers make do not hold up under scientific scrutiny from people who, mind you, actually study these subjects for a living.

Anyone can manipulate data. And like Abagond said in the post if they have to lie to get people to believe what they are saying they obviously can’t prove it so it’s obviously wrong

What is the point of engaging someone who isn’t even arguing with facts? You can’t argue with figments of someone’s imagination.

You can: but you won’t win because you can’t win, people will believe whatever they want, all you can do is get them to admit their real motive and HBDers aren’t trying to hide their real motives. So there isn’t anything to argue. It’s an exercise in futility.

Science has, and always will, take a back seat to politics – this is true no matter where you go on the planet.

That is a choice, made by humans. Or dogma in some cases. In a legitimate context however, this can only be a unidirectional choice. Proven scientific fact first, politics later, if any can or must be applied.

A scientific fact is that rain water freezes at 0°C at a pressure of 1 bar. There’s no human choice involved. It’s observable and reproducible anywhere by anybody in the exact same way. Now a scientific fact, peer-reviewed, confirmed and approved, can have political consequences. Using the simple water example, it means that public administration, set into function by politics, orders winter road service to get ready once the temperatures fall below 0°C and the roads are wet.

Where those “racial” theories dressed in a laboratory smock always shoot themselves in the foot is the assumption that correlation implies causation. They take several highly variable observations and mash them together until one looks like it’s causing the other. That’s the very fabric of junk science. The perpetrators actually sabotage their own credibility.

Ideology, dogma, belief systems etc are human constructs. Those political ideologists take the tail end first, ignore errors and imprecisions, manipulate data and mock scientific research along the way, until the “results” fit their initial preconceived notions. It reads like a propaganda machine of totalitarian systems, not like science. Plus, a popular strategy for obscuring an issue is to introduce irrelevancies. It is esotericism at best, political extremism with destructive potential at worst. What it is definitely not is natural science. Therefore no logical scientific consequence, not even a benefit for humanity can be extracted from it. It is pointless.

You’ve both made good cases for the adoption of specific approaches to tackling the arguments of HBDers.

Which in my view can be summarized as: Debating the Beliefs or the Policies.

I’ve previously stated my own view on this to King, when he argued for debunking the beliefs. I believe both approaches are valid and necessary. This is not an either or scenario its both.

As both Laura and Femi have extensively pointed out if HBDers are peddling “junk science” – The beliefs – then they need to be addressed. And if on the other hand those suspect beliefs appear to be gaining acceptance in wider society influencing policy decisions as Obsidian, for example, makes the point:

OK, so let’s consider a few of the things HBDers want to see happen, although many of them are not often stated explicitly:

1. End Affirmative Action: really, what the HBDers mean here by this term, is to end any forms of preferences or quotas that pertain to Blacks, in education and hiring. The more prestigious and elite the better. The HBD argument goes, that since African Americans are on average less intelligent than Whites, it then follows that the majority of Blacks don’t really belong in the nation’s best schools and getting the cushiest of jobs because they aren’t truly qualified for them.

The problem with this argument is that it turns a blind eye to the decades, if not centuries long practice of good ole fashioned nepotism – those very same prestigious, elite schools and firms engage in blatant nepotism all the time, by seeing to it that the children of the wealthy and well-connected get in and do well. A very prominent example of this was George W. Bush,…

They need to be debated and tackled on the political front to show the practical consequences and constitutionally unfair implications of such proposed actions.

But it is equally important to note Obsidian that your observation about politics preceding science:

ultimately, science is very much intertwined with politics for one thing, and for another no HBDer is saying that they are scientists; they are taking some understandings about IQ and other measures and applying them to varying racial groups and then applying that to public policy matters. Personally, I think its a much more useful, and constructive, use of time to consider that debate, than to merely shout it down because we don’t like what’s being said.

Is clearly addressed in Laura’s reasoning here:

That doesn’t mean the politics determine what is scientifically true. If that was the case we would still be learning that the earth is the center of the universe, just because Christians thought that it was and placed Galileo under house arrest for offending the church by pointing out that they were wrong. Politics determine what scientific facts are promoted to the general public, see the Eugenics movement, but politics do not determine what is or isn’t scientifically proven.

That is a big logical fallacy, that HBDers expect people to ignore. This isn’t shutting a debate down because you don’t like what’s being said, this is shutting someone up who doesn’t know what the hell they are talking about.

In the final analysis its the HBDer’s: Beliefs and any Policies which should be legitimate targets of any debate and discussion

O: Science has, and always will, take a back seat to politics – this is true no matter where you go on the planet.

L: Really? So the earth didn’t become the center of the universe until the Catholic Church acknowledged it as such? Listen to how you sound here.

O: Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t both Copernicus and Gallieo both incarcerated under house arrest – for quite a long time? Wasn’t James Watson forced out of his job? Wasn’t Larry Summers at Harvard? Did any of these people have the chance to debate the issues and indeed science before a judgment by putatively enlightened folk held sway? To ask the questions are to answer them.

L: I’m a racist but I need a heart transplant and the only person who has one is a black man. Does that mean I’ll let myself die because I believe in segregation and I won’t take the black man’s heart? Will science take a backseat to politics when it’s important?

Hell, no.

O: For those who strongly believe that Blacks are inferior to Whites and Asians and can point to at least anecdotal evidence in this regard, the answer would be Hell Yea! – and you know what, Lara? They have a right to that in this country. I will fight for their right to have those thoughts and to make that choice.

L: You can ignore facts but that doesn’t change how they affect you. One way or another you have to face them. That’s where cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias come in.

O: Rubbish Woman, people can and will deal with cognitive dissonance all the time. Simple case in point: we all know how Women can and will buy shoes that don’t fit. The facts are that her feet are too big for the shoes, but does that stop her from buying them? Same deal for major ad campaigns, political campaigns, WARS, etc, et al. Come on, I thought I was talking to adults living in the real world here. 😉

O: Again, notice how the HBDers simply flatout refuse to engage me on the questions I raised, which not only are legitimate, but based on their own reasoning. THAT is how you deal with them, Lara – not shouting them down or ignoring them or making them martyrs. As I told Zek and I’ll tell you, to do otherwise is to besmirch the very ideas that make our democracy what it is – which, last time I heard, was a heck of a lot closer to beliefs, than science.

L: Okay as i said before, putting something into perspective is not shouting someone down or ignoring them.

O: Yes, it is. When you do what Zek above does, or what Bundesbank did to Sarrazin, etc et al, you are indeed attempting to silence them and that goes against everything our republic holds dear.

L: I find scientific claims from people who are not scientists suspect.

O: Fair enough – then you must find religious claims from people who aren’t theologians supect; you must find people who discuss art without being artists themselves, as being suspect. You must find those who discuss say, Hip Hop, in any context, while not being Hip Hop artists, suspect. Men can’t discuss anything of what Women go through, because they’re not Women and thus are suspect. Black folk can’t discuss Asians, because they’re obviously not Asian, making them suspect. I am sure you follow this simple principle of logic throughout your life, yes? And if you don’t, why not? Please explain?
Most people given the harm that this has caused in the past and continues to cause are wise to be wary or question claims that people of dubious credentials make.
Most of the so called claims that these HBDers make do not hold up under scientific scrutiny from people who, mind you, actually study these subjects for a living.

L: Anyone can manipulate data. And like Abagond said in the post if they have to lie to get people to believe what they are saying they obviously can’t prove it so it’s obviously wrong

O: Not necessarily. Ask any marketing expert. As much as you or anyone else here may not want to admit it, Half Sigma is right when he says that people aren’t moved by facts as much as they are by emotions. If this weren’t true Madison Ave wouldn’t exist and most politicians wouldn’t get elected and/or reelected.

L: What is the point of engaging someone who isn’t even arguing with facts? You can’t argue with figments of someone’s imagination.

O: Are the founding ideals of our republic facts? That can be scientifically measured, replicated, and peer reviewed? Of course not. Yet we intensely debate them and have done so since our country’s very beginning. *shrugs*

L: You can: but you won’t win because you can’t win, people will believe whatever they want, all you can do is get them to admit their real motive and HBDers aren’t trying to hide their real motives. So there isn’t anything to argue. It’s an exercise in futility.

O: Actually, my pointed questions to them above, proves that they are indeed, hiding their true motives. The very fact that they have yet to actually answer said questions, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I’ve been posing these types of questions since I began blogging a year ago, really says it all. THAT, is how you deal with folks like them, Lara.

LARA: Most people given the harm that this has caused in the past and continues to cause are wise to be wary or question claims that people of dubious credentials make.

O: So you’re saying that Thilo Sarrazin’s credentials are dubious? You’re saying that Murray and Herrenstein’s credentials are dubious? Isn’t that a naked ad hominem attack? Why not deal with the claims made instead?

L: Most of the so called claims that these HBDers make do not hold up under scientific scrutiny from people who, mind you, actually study these subjects for a living.

O: OK, for one thing, how much have you actually studied of the HBDers to even be discussing this topic? For example, I’ve read Steve Sailer extensively for at least a decade now, Half Sigma for about three years, etc et al. Moreover, I’ve read The Bell Curve. Lara, can you say that you’ve done the same?

Moreover, correct me if I’m wrong, given that I’m just an ordinary laymen, but doesn’t Science proceed on and is built around the principles of logic and reason? If that is true, how does one attempt to argue for and from a position of science, by using unscientific and/or illogical means to dismiss claims being made? Ad hominem attacks are both unscientific and illogical. Are they not? Please explain how making personal attacks on people’s credentials and making naked appeals to the authority of those you happen to like or agree with are in any way scientfic or logical?

O: Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t both Copernicus and Gallieo both incarcerated under house arrest – for quite a long time? Wasn’t James Watson forced out of his job? Wasn’t Larry Summers at Harvard? Did any of these people have the chance to debate the issues and indeed science before a judgment by putatively enlightened folk held sway? To ask the questions are to answer them.

You completely missed/ignored my point which was this. In Galileo’s case putting him under house arrest did not change the fact that the Sun is the center of the Universe. And he did debate this issue extensively in court. That’s why he was jailed, he was convincing people that the church was wrong and he had to be silenced in order to stop him from subverting the churches authority. He was a figure of great knowledge and many people respected him so this was not undertaken lightly.

Again my point: all the actions that the church took to silence Galileo did not change the simple fact that he was right. The sun is the center of the universe. IGNORING this basic fact does NOT CHANGE the structure of the universe!

Ignaz Semmelweis the doctor who discovered that washing hands saved lives was ostracized in his time too. Rich Viennese men could not believe that they were carriers of disease, but they were. Because they would perform autopsies and the deliver babies afterward and the mother and child would die from septicemia by bacteria left on their hands from the cadavers.

Their POLITICS did not change the FACT the they were inadvertently murdering their patients because they refused to observe basic hygiene procedures!

The fact that women too poor to give birth in hospitals had a better rate of mortality and healthier infants should have been an OBVIOUS indicator that something they were doing was causing these women and babies deaths.

Politics do not change facts. Just because rich people thought diseases only came from the poor that they viewed as “dirty” that didn’t change the fact that they were spreading puerperal fever by not washing their hands!

And look at the world today: NO SURGEON would even enter an operating room without first washing their hands and performing aseptic procedures!

The truth wins in the end because you can’t argue with it. It just is.

You can accept and live by it, or you can ignore it because it offends your pride and murder a woman and a child.

O: So you’re saying that Thilo Sarrazin’s credentials are dubious? You’re saying that Murray and Herrenstein’s credentials are dubious? Isn’t that a naked ad hominem attack? Why not deal with the claiantms made instead?

Well lets see: Thilo Serrazin is a politician and a banker. Murray is a physchologist, and Herrenstein is a political scientist. I was not saying their credentials were dubious but their scientific credentials are dubious and lacking

None of those people you mentioned are biologists, geneticists, biochemists, or anything of the kind. And that is a distinction of great importance! Sailer is a journalist for Christ’s sake!

All three make claims about human biology and development where they are not qualified or experienced to make such claims.

Do they even reference biologists, neurologists, geneticists, to advocate what they claim?

No. They don’t because no scientist worth his degree would believe what they are saying because they know better!

Put it this way: would you rather have a journalist/psychologist/political scientist determine whether you carry the genetic marker for sickle cell by his “research”

Or would you got to a researcher who specializes in genetics and pathology (like my sister)

More importantly whose opinion would be accurate do you think? Who is better qualified to make an assertion about human genetics?

BTW it’s not ad homium it’s the first rule of inquiry that you seem to have forgotten Obsidian: CONSIDER THE SOURCE!

I suppose in a democracy everybody is free to study whatever they choose to, even junk science. I’ll stick to serious scientific publications without ideological bias. Most of the time I weigh everything I read up to my own reasoning and observations. My skepticism is strong enough to not blindly buy into everything written, especially when it contains inconsistencies or fallacies.

I have read parts of the Bell Curve. As I said before, it’s a mishmash of superficially treated disciplines that is supposed to lead to a one-dimensional conclusion. It’s based on a number of unproven premises which don’t even get addressed in the book but assumed as a given. It is what it is, a sensationalist theory that sells and makes money, rather in the realm of “intelligent design”.

Have you ever lived in Germany? I have and I always had relatives and friends who live there. All of the people I know were always in direct touch with Germans and the minorities, Turks, Vietnamese, people from all corners of Africa, Arabs or they are minorities themselves. I actually now live fairly close to the German border. I understand German and can not only follow the news but everything people in the streets are saying. Plenty of first hand info there, no filters.

The internal issues in Germany are way too complex to comb them over with one book. That is, a one-dimensional book written with questionable methodologies and from the viewpoint of a fundamentally different mentality.

Once again, and that is the point, you would very certainly run into a multitude of problems trying to prove a direct causation of genetics to the social issues over there. Inversely, you would find plenty of direct causation of sociopolitical factors though. Factors that are absolutely worth the time and effort looking into much more closely.

In Galileo’s case putting him under house arrest did not change the fact that the Sun is the center of the Universe.

You said this earlier and I figured it was a typo, but now you’ve written it again so I assume that you really think this is true. Just to let you know, the sun is not the center of the universe. I’d explain further, but I want to see if you can figure out your mistake on your own.

Moreover, correct me if I’m wrong, given that I’m just an ordinary laymen, but doesn’t Science proceed on and is built around the principles of logic and reason?

No. Science is founded on research and investigation and the scientific method.

Let me repeat that: Science is founded on research and investigation and the scientific method!

Alot of scientific truths defy logic! Science it is not always intuitive and it is more often than not illogical. That is why alot of people cannot make sense of it without proper training, mindset and alot of very fucking tedious work !. If science was intuitive and logical we would all be Quantum Physicists but we are not

Quantum Physics for example has it’s own set of logic and if you don’t know it and understand it you will not be able to use it in any meaningful way!

How did people discover the logic of quantum physics?
Through research and investigation: experiments with cause and effect, trial and error. Over and over again.

Well, you’re narrowing it down a bit, but the sun is not the center of the galaxy either. It’s the center of the solar system. Our solar system lies at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, where it rotates around the galaxy’s center.

L: Well lets see: Thilo Serrazin is a politician and a banker. Murray is a physchologist, and Herrenstein is a political scientist. I was not saying their credentials were dubious but their scientific credentials are dubious and lacking

O: Wrong. Murray is a political scientist, Herrenstein was a Harvard psychologist, and Sarrazin was a executive board member of Bundesbank and a politician serving in the, if memory serves, SPD party in Germany. He also cites The Bell Curve in his work. Wikipedia, Lara. 😉

L: None of those people you mentioned are biologists, geneticists, biochemists, or anything of the kind. And that is a distinction of great importance! Sailer is a journalist for Christ’s sake!

O: Yes, that’s true; however, none of these people have made any claims that they were Men of Science. Strawmn arguments, anyone?

L: All three make claims about human biology and development where they are not qualified or experienced to make such claims.

L: Do they even reference biologists, neurologists, geneticists, to advocate what they claim?

O: You would be able to answer these questions if you had indeed read their works for yourself.

L: No. They don’t because no scientist worth his degree would believe what they are saying because they know better!

O: Is this something you know or are making an assumption about?

L: Put it this way: would you rather have a journalist/psychologist/political scientist determine whether you carry the genetic marker for sickle cell by his “research”

Or would you go(t) to a researcher who specializes in genetics and pathology (like my sister)

O: I would say that such a question is irrelevant to what we are discussing, which is ultimately, whether those who cotton to HBD views have the right to put their views out into the public square. I say yes, they do. You say, no, they do not. Hence the bone of contention between us.

L: More importantly whose opinion would be accurate do you think? Who is better qualified to make an assertion about human genetics?

O: I have no idea, but then I never argued things on those grounds. *shrugs*
L: BTW it’s not ad homium it’s the first rule of inquiry that you seem to have forgotten Obsidian: CONSIDER THE SOURCE!

O: Actually, no, it’s not. That’s not how logic works. If claim A is made, it is irrelevant as to who made it or why; the first thing to do is investigate whether said claim is indeed accurate/true or not. Doing otherwise, is indeed a logical fallacy, ie, because so and so is or is not reputable, their claim is either accurate/inaccurate.

Are we learning yet?
😉

Holla back

O.

PS: And we don’t disagree with Gallileo – he was indeed right – but the fact that he was LOCKED UP proves that concerns other than that which is right or true or accurate can and often will come before pure logic. Such is the way of Humanity. 😉

It’s called Quantum Mechanics. Try to use logic and intuition to make sense of it. Lets see how far you get without(presumably?) any background in physics, molecular chemistry, biology or abstract mathematics.

And if you think genetics, biology, anthropology, neurology or any of the other scientific disciplines can be comprehended by people without any background in those disciplines that can be corroborated by some kind of degree(taking “a class” does not count unless you demonstrate some innate mastery of it, in which case you are a genius) then I have a bridge I would like to sell you and a cure for cancer.

And no you can’t switch one scientist for another, that is why there is such a thing called specialization. A physicist is (usually) not qualified to perform a minimally invasive bypass just because he studied biology. He’s a physicist, not a cardiovascular surgeon, they have different areas of mastery and methods of thinking.

Back to my point: Sailer et al make scientific claims using other peoples fucking research and cherry pick data that supports their claims and ignore data that contradicts their claims sometimes it’s even data that they picked themselves!

Given that they have no experience with what they are discussing it’s understandable that they would misrepresent it

And no I didn’t read any of Steve Sailers crap, I didread the Bell Curve. It was required reading for my Research Methods class on how NOT TO DO RESEARCH.

Have you read “What it means to be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes people and their genes”|?

Have you read any of the numerous papers and books by molecular biologists, forensic anthropologists, geneticists and neurologists, negating or outright disproving the Bell Curves claims?

F: I suppose in a democracy everybody is free to study whatever they choose to, even junk science.

O: Yes and no. Yes, you we have the right to study or study whatever we like. But no, you don’t have the right to determine what is or is not junk science. That would be your opinion, and per Lara’s comments, not a very good one unless you are a scientist yourself. Are you?

F: Most of the time I weigh everything I read up to my own reasoning and observations. My skepticism is strong enough to not blindly buy into everything written, especially when it contains inconsistencies or fallacies.

O: Does this mean that you have or have not read The Bell Curve?

F: I have read parts of the Bell Curve.

O: What parts? Please explain?

F: As I said before, it’s a mishmash of superficially treated disciplines that is supposed to lead to a one-dimensional conclusion.

O: How can you say what its conclusion is if by your own admission you haven’t read it in its entirety? Please explain?

F: It’s based on a number of unproven premises which don’t even get addressed in the book but assumed as a given.

O: OK – such as?

F: It is what it is, a sensationalist theory that sells and makes money, rather in the realm of “intelligent design”.

O: Uh huh…

F: Have you ever lived in Germany? I have and I always had relatives and friends who live there.

O: No I haven’t but since you have and have relatives there, you should know better than myself what Sarrazin’s writing and talking about, yes? Nor should the fact that what Merkl said and Sarrazin’s book being hugely successful even as others seek to remove him from polite society come as no shock to you, yes?

F: All of the people I know were always in direct touch with Germans and the minorities, Turks, Vietnamese, people from all corners of Africa, Arabs or they are minorities themselves. I actually now live fairly close to the German border. I understand German and can not only follow the news but everything people in the streets are saying. Plenty of first hand info there, no filters.

O: Good – then you’ve read Germany Does Away With Itself. Right?

F: The internal issues in Germany are way too complex to comb them over with one book. That is, a one-dimensional book written with questionable methodologies and from the viewpoint of a fundamentally different mentality.

O: Are you saying this from a position of actually having read the book and knowing what it actually saidk or are you saying this from another position? Just wanted to be clear on this point.

F: Once again, and that is the point, you would very certainly run into a multitude of problems trying to prove a direct causation of genetics to the social issues over there.

O: Why? How? Please explain?

F: Inversely, you would find plenty of direct causation of sociopolitical factors though. Factors that are absolutely worth the time and effort looking into much more closely.

O: I don’t think Sarrazin is arguing otherwise, from what i’ve read of his work and statements. I think his is a very dense, stat metric laden work that raises a lot of very intersting questions for the German state in particular and any pluralistic society in general in our times.

Hi Sagat,
Nice to see you hnere! Since you demurred from answering in full, my public policy based questions re: HBD on your blog, perhaps you will entertain them here, and if not, please explain why? Thanks!

I’m familar with the discussion. I won’t speak for Chuck, but I’ll just note this:

Since Doug Williams played in a Super Bowl roughly a quarter of a century ago, how many Super Bowl winning Black QBs has the NFL had? When Rush Limbaugh said that Donovan McNabb was overrated because he was Black, was he right or wrong, and on what basis do you say so, either way? Chuck and others like him argue the reason why we haven’t seen many Black NFL QBs in the Super Bowl Champion class is because they lack the intelligence that other White QBs have who’ve been Superbowl winners. In fact, it could be said that, per their argument, Tom Brady and Terry Bradshaw are among the smartest Men to ever play the game.

The NFL employs what is known as the Wonderlic test – an IQ test – to determine how prospective players rank and what their mental capacities are. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but it would be interesting to take all the Black QBs’ Wonderlic test scores since Doug Williams and compare them to all the White Superbowl winning QBs and see what we get – would the former’s scores be higher, lower or roughly match, to within say, two points or so, said White QBs?

O: Actually, no, it’s not. That’s not how logic works. If claim A is made, it is irrelevant as to who made it or why; the first thing to do is investigate whether said claim is indeed accurate/true or not. Doing otherwise, is indeed a logical fallacy, ie, because so and so is or is not reputable, their claim is either accurate/inaccurate.

I didn’t say it was logic , I said it was inquiry and investigation. The first step of any investigation of any claim is to consider the source. Where is this information coming from, not just the person making the claim, but where they got their information to make that claim and most importantly:

WHAT QUALIFIES THEM TO MAKE THAT CLAIM?

Did you not take research methods?

O: Is this something you know or are making an assumption about?

See my earlier comment about “The Bell Curve” and for God’s sake read “What it Mans to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes People and their Genes”

I don’t need to read a book by a non scientist on science, there are plenty of other books by actual scientists that I would rather read/study. You seem to like taking your “education” from people that aren’t even qualified to teach you.

As I said apply your “logic and intuition” to something worth learning like molecular anthropology and see how well you do.

L: I didn’t say it was logic , I said it was inquiry and investigation. The first step of any investigation of any claim is to consider the source. Where is this information coming from, not just the person making the claim, but where they got their information to make that claim and most importantly:

WHAT QUALIFIES THEM TO MAKE THAT CLAIM?

Did you not take research methods?

O: No, I did not, but then I never claimed to be a scientist. I am however famililar with with logic and reason and making informed, reasoned arguments and how to determine those from those who are not. Like Kwamla said, we are definitely arguing two different things here, and at this point I’m cool to just agree to disagree.
O: Is this something you know or are making an assumption about?

L: See my earlier comment about “The Bell Curve” and for God’s sake read “What it Mans to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes People and their Genes”

O: Yes, I saw that. It doesn’t answer my question as to whether you have investigated the matter. Clearly, you have not.

L: I don’t need to read a book by a non scientist on science, there are plenty of other books by actual scientists that I would rather read/study. You seem to like taking your “education” from people that aren’t even qualified to teach you.

O: I took no position either pro or con wrt The Bell Curve or Germany Abolishes Itself; indeed, if anything, per my earlier statements/questions to the HBDers, one could infer that I have a con or against view of them. Either way, for you to make the argument personal is not the way of logic. Or science, I dare say.

L: As I said apply your “logic and intuition” to something worth learning like molecular anthropology and see how well you do.

O: If I were interested in such a discipline your unsolicited advise would be useful. As it happens however, I am not, in either.

Try again.

Let’s stick to the public policy arguments, shall we? Let’s take Sarrazin’s arguments – do you know them? Let’s take John Ogbu’s studies of Black middle class kids in Shaker Heights still lagging behind much poorer Whites and Asians on standardized tests – are you aware of them? If so, how do you account for the results? Please explain?

@ SagatWell, you’re narrowing it down a bit, but the sun is not the center of the galaxy either. It’s the center of the solar system. Our solar system lies at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy, where it rotates around the galaxy’s center.

Thank you. I knew it was some damn word or other. Again. It’s finals week. Why am I on here then? I like to procrastinate too much, and I find that I actually learn better using “Oh shit that test is Wednesday?!” performance anxiety to stimulate my brain. It hasn’t failed me yet.(Thank God!)

And I’ve only studied any kind of astronomy peripherally so that reflects my poor vocabulary on it. Astronomical sciences not my fort. Mea Culpa

O: Yes, I saw that. It doesn’t answer my question as to whether you have investigated the matter. Clearly, you have not.

Actually I did which is why I was able to dismiss it as my Professor did as many people of the scientific community did.
And no I myself haven’t personally investigated it, my major is Chemistry and Linguistics so I could care less about most social sciences. But I have read and studied other peoples work in the fields that they liberally borrowed from that tell them why they are wrong.

The chief reason? My sister is as black as I am. She also has lupus but if she needed a liver transplant her donor match would be an Asian, not a black person.

Why? Well apparently her gene cocktail and mine make us more genetically compatible with Asians for organs. We would be less likely to reject them even though we both look black this fact of biology (probably) reflects my Grandmothers(paternal and Maternal), Native American Ancestry.

Most claims of race science fly in the face genetics and molecular anthropology. Race is just a skin color and an extremely limited classification of groups of people that only people lacking the scientific knowledge to recognize distinctions make any real use of.

Which is what the other book I was required to read “What it Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes people and their genes?”is about. Genetics creates a more interesting picture of people and their real similarities and differences, needless to say most of those differences aren’t biological or innate in any way and at least not it the way that Murray and et al are claiming.

Just because something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck that doesn’t make it a duck. If that was the case, Chimpanzees would be writing Shakespeare. After all there is no clearly definitive biological reason why they wouldn’t they are that genetically that similar to us. The difference between us and Chimpanzees? Like 2.8999 something. This is where intuitive thinking and logic diverge a bit with sciences like genetics. If people who have spent good portions of their lives studying it have a hard time laying down the ground rules of how it works or even what a gene actually is I don’t trust someone who isn’t in the field trying to use it to justify their claims whatever those may be. Not without some critical scrutiny by the scientific community.

O: No, I did not, but then I never claimed to be a scientist. I am however famililar with with logic and reason and making informed, reasoned arguments and how to determine those from those who are not. Like Kwamla said, we are definitely arguing two different things here, and at this point I’m cool to just agree to disagree.

I’m familar with the discussion. I won’t speak for Chuck, but I’ll just note this:

Since Doug Williams played in a Super Bowl roughly a quarter of a century ago, how many Super Bowl winning Black QBs has the NFL had? When Rush Limbaugh said that Donovan McNabb was overrated because he was Black, was he right or wrong, and on what basis do you say so, either way? Chuck and others like him argue the reason why we haven’t seen many Black NFL QBs in the Super Bowl Champion class is because they lack the intelligence that other White QBs have who’ve been Superbowl winners. In fact, it could be said that, per their argument, Tom Brady and Terry Bradshaw are among the smartest Men to ever play the game.

The NFL employs what is known as the Wonderlic test – an IQ test – to determine how prospective players rank and what their mental capacities are. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but it would be interesting to take all the Black QBs’ Wonderlic test scores since Doug Williams and compare them to all the White Superbowl winning QBs and see what we get – would the former’s scores be higher, lower or roughly match, to within say, two points or so, said White QBs?

What say you, Lara? You game? 😉

O.

I could waste my time explaining why IQ tests are bullshit, but I’m not. All I can say offhand is I thought althetes were judged on their physical performance what good is someone with excellent spacial recognition that has a week arm?

Besides it’s a little off topic and I’m a nerd, I can play sports but I honestly don’t care about them. No interest whatsoever in watching people perform the same actions with balls over and over again.

One of the big problems with contemporary pronouncements about the “genetic basis for” any variety of human variations (and as “explanations” for differences among groups) is that the context used to generate those questions derives from the old, discarded typological views of human classification – views increasingly rejected by anthropologists beginning in the 1940s when anthropology began to acknowledge that human populations are not “naturally packaged into discrete groups” (p. 73). Molecular (or any) studies based on these old notions that human variation fits into several types with fixed biogeographic boundaries ignore contemporary anthropological theory – and reality. This would be comparable to initiating a new “genetics” research project based only on methods and practice from the 1940s, before the discovery of the structure of DNA.

L: I could waste my time explaining why IQ tests are bullshit, but I’m not.

O: So, there is nothing at all to be said for intelligence tests of any kind then, right? So we should just do away with the SAT – the closest thing we have to a national IQ test, then – right? I’m pretty sure you can make that case to the university you’re currently attending – I’m sorrying, you didn’t say which uni that was. Harvard? Yale? Princeton? Northwestern? Cornell? Columbia? Stanford? MIT? Upenn?

L: All I can say offhand is I thought althetes were judged on their physical performance what good is someone with excellent spacial recognition that has a week arm?

O: Not only have you thought wrong but you’re putting up yet another strawman. Of course you need a good arm, that’s part of what makes a good QB. But that wasn’t the point and you know it. You just don’t know what you’re talking about, is all. Too bad. I was looking forward to you presenting the evidence that the Wonderlic test was booty per what I said about Black QBs and their Superbowl records…

L: Besides it’s a little off topic and I’m a nerd, I can play sports but I honestly don’t care about them. No interest whatsoever in watching people perform the same actions with balls over and over again.

O: No it’s not, because we’re talking about some of the core claims the HBDers have made, one of which focuses on racial differences in intelligence. and if we’re off topic that’s entirely your fault since it was you who brought it up to begin with. You just don’t like the fact thaqt again, I chin checked you.

“Laura,
You’re dodging the question. Let’s try this agin, this time, very slowly, hmm?

Have YOU, actually read, The Bell Curve, or not?

I HAVE.”

It is not necessary to read The Bell Curve, in order to discuss certain concepts being discussed therein.

If one is sufficiently familiar with the minute details of a U.S. $100 dollar bill, it is not necessary to to become an expert in every kind of counterfeit that comes along.

A thorough familiarity with the truth is ample preparation for identifying that which is less than true… Unless, of course, you just want to discuss the book itself, and not the broader ideas presented by it.

It says very little about Race. out of a nearly 1,000 page book, very, very little.

The book was speaking about the role intelligence plays in modern American life, and how social classes are ordered on that. The big brouhaha in terms of kneejerk reaction it got from the Stephen Jay Goulds of the world, was in that little portion on Race in TBC, not really the overarching point the book was making.

So, since Race plays such a small role in the book to begin with, and since you’ve actually read what it said, let’s begin here:

Do you agree or disagree that some people are inherently smarter than others, and if so/not, why?

Laura,
You’re dodging the question. Let’s try this agin, this time, very slowly, hmm?

Have YOU, actually read, The Bell Curve, or not?

I just told you twice yes that’s not dodging the question. You act like the Bell Curve is some type of trump card.

“One of the big problems with contemporary pronouncements about the “genetic basis for” any variety of human variations (and as “explanations” for differences among groups) is that the context used to generate those questions derives from the old, discarded typological views of human classification – views increasingly rejected by anthropologists beginning in the 1940s when anthropology began to acknowledge that human populations are not “naturally packaged into discrete groups” (p. 73). Molecular (or any) studies based on these old notions that human variation fits into several types with fixed biogeographic boundaries ignore contemporary anthropological theory – and reality. This would be comparable to initiating a new “genetics” research project based only on methods and practice from the 1940s, before the discovery of the structure of DNA.”

Have you read “What it Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes people and their genes?” The MOLECULAR ANTHROPOLOGIST who wrote it explains why the conclusions they reach about “race” are wrong. But this is a case of facts arguing with opinions again.

Laura,
Yes, I’m familiar with RIT, and happen to know quite a few alums of NU. Perhaps you could form a coalition with them to abolish NU’s insistence on using the SAT, LOL.

No, I have not read the book about Chimps. But then, this was never a discussion about that book. It is a discussion about a particular blogger who has a particular position and mindset, that is informed by certain sources. You may disagree with said sources, but they are sources nevertheless, and it is good and useful to be familiar with said sources.

Paleontologists, evolutionary biologists, and scientific historians of the world you mean? Molecular anthropologists you mean? Geneticists you mean?

Maybe the problem that they have with “The Bell Curve” is that it borrows liberally from their disciplines while misrepresenting the facts and painting an inaccurate picture, by people who haven’t even put in the work time effort energy discipline that they have into doing research.

As I don’t have time to spend my whole evening on the internet and it would be excessive to reply to all of those points in detail, I’ll only address one point (for now). Take it as the one that sums up what has been said before and one that demonstrates how absurd it is to even try to apply natural science to social science.

* The unemployment rate (in %) among foreign nationals in Germany is highest among Turks, way before nationals or descendants of African countries for instance.
* The same holds true for the knowledge of the German language, spoken and written.
* The general education standard of foreign nationals is the lowest (once again, percentage-wise) among Turkish descendants, especially females.
* The willingness / ability of assimilation by German standards is the lowest among individuals of Turkish descent.
* The old internal tensions between the two major ethnic groups of Turkey, Turks and Kurds, are imported into Germany to the point that German authorities are unable/unwilling to handle it.
* The percentage of radical traditionalist mentality and religious extremists are the highest among Turks.
* German law authorises multiple citizenship only in a few exceptional cases, but usually not with Turkish citizens. The right of soil is a foreign concept in Germany, so people born in Germany from Turkish parents are automatically Turkish, and only Turkish. They can later apply for German citizenship but have to give up their Turkish one. Something which goes against much of the traditional belief the family might hold dearly.
* Peer pressure is the most extreme in the Turkish community, compared to other foreigners.
* The effort to get naturalised (%) is the lowest among Turks compared to other foreign groups.
* The vast majority of people of Turkish descent are muslims. The vast majority of Germans are non-confessional or Christian.
* The general frustration of foreign nationals of living in Germany is highest among Turks.
* The crime rate of foreign nationals is highest among Turks.
* The most misunderstood, mistrusted and least integrated ethnic group among Germans in Germany are… you guessed it. The Turks. People who would be classified “white” in the USA.
* The majority of Turks in Germany with higher education and successful professional careers come from secular and less traditionalist family backgrounds. Usually also educated and/or well to do parents.

Now explain all of the above with genetics under the assumption that there are 5 human “races” (by US American standards).

Just as a reminder, people of Turkish descent are by far the largest minority in Germany.

No, I have not read the book about Chimps. But then, this was never a discussion about that book.
No but we are talking about contemporary molecular anthropology, genetics, sociology, statistics, and biology. The book also isn’t about “chimps” It’s about:This book is more than a long argument about the technical precision of various genetic and biochemical methods, however. It is about what we make of them.Long before the 98% figure burst forth into the public discourse, scientists and nonscientists alike were convinced that the African apes were our closest biological relatives. Every relevant discipline – comparative anatomy, palaeontology, embryology, psychology, behavioural ecology, comparative physiology, and so on – produced the same conclusion. In one sense, the molecular studies only confirmed what we already knew, as they should.

However, in another sense, the widespread use of this figure is misleading, Marks argues, because its apparent precision generates a false sense of scientific certainty – not so much in the great genetic similarity that it confirms between closely related species, but in the inference that this figure somehow “explains” things. What things could it explain? Suggestions range from promiscuity to aggression to homosexuality to any of a wide variety of interesting conditions that have so far only the most tenuous connection to specific sequences of DNA contained in the individuals who express them. There is a long, long chain of inference here, and for years Marks has consistently been calling scientists and science popularisers to task for their overgeneralizations of genetics research to address a wide variety of interesting social, legal, and technical issues: everything from racial studies, to animal rights, to creationism, to cultural hegemony and colonialism.

The book was speaking about the role intelligence plays in modern American life, and how social classes are ordered on that. The big brouhaha in terms of kneejerk reaction it got from the Stephen Jay Goulds of the world, was in that little portion on Race in TBC, not really the overarching point the book was making.

So, since Race plays such a small role in the book to begin with, and since you’ve actually read what it said, let’s begin here:

Do you agree or disagree that some people are inherently smarter than others, and if so/not, why?

I don’t think science has proven enough about the functions of genes and the brain to even begin to answer that question. What “I” think isn’t important anyway it’s what can be proven that’s important. To me that is what counts. Obviously not to you.

L: Paleontologists, evolutionary biologists, and scientific historians of the world you mean? Molecular anthropologists you mean? Geneticists you mean?

O: Yes, I mean them-those who got their knickers in a twist over nothing. But then, that’s what academics do, quibble over the small details instead of dealing with the main point being made. Majoring in the minors.

L: Maybe the problem that they have with “The Bell Curve” is that it borrows liberally from their disciplines while misrepresenting the facts and painting an inaccurate picture, by people who haven’t even put in the work time effort energy discipline that they have into doing research.

O: So, it’s inaccurate to say outloud what we all know to be true – that some people are indeed smarter than others? And that as the world gets more and more mechanized, information based and automated, that we ought to give at least some thought as to what we’re going to do with those who ain’t so bright?

Is that what you’re talking about? Because if you are, great! join the club:

L: I don’t think science has proven enough about the functions of genes and the brain to even begin to answer that question. What “I” think isn’t important anyway it’s what can be proven that’s important. To me that is what counts. Obviously not to you.

O: Yes, I mean them-those who got their knickers in a twist over nothing. But then, that’s what academics do, quibble over the small details instead of dealing with the main point being made. Majoring in the minors.

When you work in science you have pay attention to details, it’s your life’s work. Which is a good thing. You’re basically criticizing the scientific method of thinking. And again paleontology, evolutionary biology, genetics, molecular anthropology are minors?

O: So, it’s inaccurate to say outloud what we all know to be true – that some people are indeed smarter than others? And that as the world gets more and more mechanized, information based and automated, that we ought to give at least some thought as to what we’re going to do with those who ain’t so bright?

Is that what you’re talking about? Because if you are, great! join the club:

L: No but we are talking about contemporary molecular anthropology, genetics, sociology, statistics, and biology.

O: Correction: YOU were talking about all that jazz. As we’ve already established, Murrary, Herrenstein nor Sarrazin, are any of the types of people you mention above. Nor is this thread about those topics. Strawman, anyone?

Holla back when you get those Wonderlic results – they should be easy to obtain via Google…

L: When you work in science you have pay attention to details, it’s your life’s work. Which is a good thing. You’re basically criticizing the scientific method of thinking. And again paleontology, evolutionary biology, genetics, molecular anthropology are minors?

O: No I’m not, I’m basically calling those who focus on what, less than a chapter out of a nearly 1000 page book, while at the same time ignoring the rest of said book, to not only be majoring in the minors but to also being disengenuous. There, I’ve said it. 🙂

L: How do we” know” that some people are smarter than others?

O: Well, one way to know is called the SAT – perhaps you’ve heard of it?

And another is called the Wonderlic.

There are others.

So, do you deny that there is a such thing as smart folk and not so smart folk in the world around us, Laura? Forget about Race now, since you and I both know TBC never really dealt with that issue. Have you ever seen the film Idiocracy?

Hi Femi,
Wow, for a person with such a busy and hectic schedule, you sure do seem to have a lot of time to debunk stuff you have yet to actually read, LOL. Please holla back when you’ve actually read Germany Abolishes Itself. Should prove for an enlightening conversation!

@ Obsidian
I didn’t even read it to be honest, I thought you were changing the subject.

O: Correction: YOU were talking about all that jazz. As we’ve already established, Murrary, Herrenstein nor Sarrazin, are any of the types of people you mention above. Nor is this thread about those topics. Strawman, anyone?

How is that strawman? It’s putting the issue into perspective which you seem unwilling or unable to do.

Why is it that when someone has a point you can’t refute you label it as “Ad homium” or “strawman” to derail the discussion? That’s a very lazy style of arguing

If there was any factual basis to HBDers et all claims why would scientists not only directly contradict them and not only that prove that they grossly abhorrently wrong and inaccurate?

There is no factual basis which is why it is a waste of time in my opinion engaging them at all. If people want to believe the moon is made of blue cheese they will, irregardless of what the facts are. Futhermore in order for them to persist in beliefs that ignore /misrepresent reality they have to lie, to themselves and everyone else.

O: Well, one way to know is called the SAT – perhaps you’ve heard of it?

And another is called the Wonderlic.

There are others.

So, do you deny that there is a such thing as smart folk and not so smart folk in the world around us, Laura? Forget about Race now, since you and I both know TBC never really dealt with that issue. Have you ever seen the film Idiocracy?

The only thing that those measure is a person’s ability to to take a test if it actually measured intelligence every high SAT scorer would be a nobel prize winner,or as I pointed out earlier a quantum physicist. 😉

You know what the person with one of the highest IQs does for a living? He’s a bartender.

I didn’t deny that there were “smart and not so smart folk” but I don’t think we understand enough about neuroanatomy and neurochemistry to qualify it in any meaningful way. Of course there are differences but they don’t necessarily mean anything and certainly not what HBDers claim they mean.

And I brought up Chuck because he pulled that HBD trick of referencing science he didn’t even understand or care enough to even read. I didn’t actually read the post he wrote a and could not care less about it. I was commenting on something he wrote here. He claimed an article that he didn’t actually read proved his point, when I pointed out that the article actually contradicted his point he still and that he basically was lying he still said he was right even though he had no justification for his belief at that point.

L: @ Obsidian
I didn’t even read it to be honest, I thought you were changing the subject.

O: You didn’t read what to be honest, and what subject was I supposing to be changing? Please explain?

O: Correction: YOU were talking about all that jazz. As we’ve already established, Murrary, Herrenstein nor Sarrazin, are any of the types of people you mention above. Nor is this thread about those topics. Strawman, anyone?

L: How is that (a) strawman? It’s putting the issue into perspective which you seem unwilling or unable to do.

O: No, its trying to cloud the issue with stuff no one on this thread talked about. No one said anything about anthropology or genetics etc. None of these guys claimed expertise in these fields, nor have any of the bloggers who take their cues from them, nor have I or anyone else who dares to discuss it. You just dont want to deal with the public policy questions straight up, and therefore are no worse than the HBDers who also punkout of dealing with my very pointed questions.

L: Why is it that when someone has a point you can’t refute you label it as “Ad homium” or “strawman” to derail the discussion? That’s a very lazy style of arguing

O: No, it’s not, its a very accurate way of arguing. When you pointed out the building blocks of Science, did I do a tapdance or did i man up and admit that you were right?

L: If there was any factual basis to HBDers et all claims why would scientists not only directly contradict them and not only that prove that they grossly abhorrently wrong and inaccurate?

O: I don’t know. I’m not arguing on the basis of science, and never have. You would have to ask those who care about such a question. I care about the public policy implications of HBD. Simple as that.

L: There is no factual basis which is why it is a waste of time in my opinion engaging them at all. If people want to believe the moon is made of blue cheese they will, irregardless of what the facts are. Futhermore in order for them to persist in beliefs that ignore /misrepresent reality they have to lie, to themselves and everyone else.

O: There is no factual, scientific basis for art. Should we therefore discard it as a topic of discussion? Religion has no basis in actual fact. Does that then mean that it’s worthless and a waste of time? You do see where I’m going with this, don’t you?

O: Well, one way to know is called the SAT – perhaps you’ve heard of it?

And another is called the Wonderlic.

There are others.

So, do you deny that there is a such thing as smart folk and not so smart folk in the world around us, Laura? Forget about Race now, since you and I both know TBC never really dealt with that issue. Have you ever seen the film Idiocracy?

L: The only thing that those measure is a person’s ability to to take a test if it actually measured intelligence every high SAT scorer would be a nobel prize winner,or as I pointed out earlier a quantum physicist.

O: Of course not, and no one, not Murray or anyone else on the HBD side, has made such an argument. What they HAVE said, is that there are realworld implications for having concentrations of not so bright people in a given advanced society, and those implications can be seen and measured in any number of ways. Although it has always been my view that merely being born on the right end of the bell curve didn’t mean that you were free from all problems in this life, the fact remains that those who have more smarts than less tend to do a bit better than life than those who don’t; and even if one rejects that premise the major thrust of The Bell Curve stands: in an advanced technologically based society, what are we to do with those who for whatever reason, simply don’t have the brainpower to keep up? That’s something none of the eggheads, including Gould, ever get around to answering.

They’re too busy wrestling strawmen to the ground…

L: You know what the person with one of the highest IQs does for a living? He’s a bartender.

O: Yes, I know. That still doesn’t kill the major point – that those who are smarter, all things being equal, tend to do better and go farther in life, than those who don’t. In aggregate, this is true. Wonderlic, anyone?

L: I didn’t deny that there were “smart and not so smart folk”

O: No, You just dodged the question altogether. So, I need to get you on the record here: do you deny that there is such an animal, as smart and not so smart people in this world, Laura?

L: but I don’t think we understand enough about neuroanatomy and neurochemistry to qualify it in any meaningful way. Of course there are differences but they don’t necessarily mean anything and certainly not what HBDers claim they mean.

O: OK then – what, exactly, do HBDers claim to mean? Please explain? Secondly, if the IQ tests are BS why does your school rely on them so much? Please explain?

L: And I brought up Chuck because he pulled that HBD trick of referencing science he didn’t even understand or care enough to even read. I didn’t actually read the post he wrote a and could not care less about it. I was commenting on something he wrote here. He claimed an article that he didn’t actually read proved his point, when I pointed out that the article actually contradicted his point he still and that he basically was lying he still said he was right even though he had no justification for his belief at that point.

O: Yes, but you see, here’s the problem: I actually read the same post you mentioned by Chuck and I happen to know a bit about how the NFL works and why, and that was his point in discussing Black QB performance cognitively. You were just chomping at the bit to use anything to discredit HBDers and pulled Chuck’s name out of a hat and again, when you got butt hurt you decide to change the subject instead of actually living up to the Scientific Method and actually going and investigating the matter based on the best available evidence we have at hand.

Hi Sagat,
Nice to see you here! Since you demurred from answering in full, my public policy based questions re: HBD on your blog, perhaps you will entertain them here, and if not, please explain why? Thanks!

I tried having a discussion with you, but as I told you before, you seem more interested in using me as a stand in for other bloggers that you have issues with, instead of discussing what I write. And your method of discussion can be extremely frustrating, where you quote a whole paragraph that I wrote and give a one sentence response that doesn’t add to or expand the conversation and simply tries to distract. You should learn to quote the pertinent details or reply to the entirety of the content with something thoughtful, instead of picking apart comments, which inevitably leads to your miscomprehension of the larger points raised. Your wall of words commenting style where you quote EVERYTHING that the other person wrote is not only unnecessarily redundant, it’s no fun to read.

Kwamla,
I do indeed; i want people to focus on the questions I ask. It forces them to confront some things they currently take as a given.

Sagat consistently punks out everytime I ask him straight up questions about HBD. He claims not to be like all the other HBDers, yet he imbibes precisely their viewpoints. You’ve seen his blog, Kwamla. Am I wrong? Compare it to Half Sigma’s whom we’re discussing right now. The bottomline is that Sagat simply cannot deal with my straight up public policy questions on HBD, and surprise just about every other HBDer punks out when I ask said questions, too. At the end of the day, that’s what really counts, not my debating style, or what I do or don’t quote, etc et al. Rubbish. Deal with the questions, straight up, or shut the you know what up.

Its true that I have visited and commented on Sagat’s blog. And yes your right for someone who prides himself as a supporter of HBDer views he does seem to shy away from dealing directly with “Beliefs” and “Policy” issues.

Some of the complex and detailed debates taking pace on Abagond’s blog could never be entertained over there.

Nevertheless…

Obsidian. I’ve stated it before and its worth stating it again there is more than one valid approach here.

You may believe that your adversarial debating style is not what really counts but, I would argue someone specifically interested in debating or even forming social policy issues should have a vested interest in their audience. Why?

You want to win people over with your insightful questioning by showing how HBDer’s ill-thought out policies don’t really stand up to obvious scrutiny. You want to take your audience with you when you do this not alienate them.

Unfortunately, from my observations over the many threads I have seen where you’ve posted this has tended to be the case. Its actually starting to happen again in this thread. – Alienation

Now you may not care if you view this as being an acceptable part of your agenda but I’ve yet to see any debates on or changes to social policy issues won on the basis of alienating ones audience.

Ha! There you go again believing that no one can match your wits, when the truth, as pointed out time and time again by multiple people, is that you’re annoyingly hardheaded and incapable of engaging in healthy dialogue. But it must be everyone else right? You just can’t fathom that people don’t like talking to you because of how you act, not what you say. Have a little introspection and recognize who the common denominator is here. You.

Sagat,
Given that we’ve had the discussion over at Abagond’s and that You’d said that you were planning to do up a post along the lines of my comments following, I thought to post these up:

OK, so let’s consider a few of the things HBDers want to see happen, although many of them are not often stated explicitly:

1. End Affirmative Action: really, what the HBDers mean here by this term, is to end any forms of preferences or quotas that pertain to Blacks, in education and hiring. The more prestigious and elite the better. The HBD argument goes, that since African Americans are on average less intelligent than Whites, it then follows that the majority of Blacks don’t really belong in the nation’s best schools and getting the cushiest of jobs because they aren’t truly qualified for them.

The problem with this argument is that it turns a blind eye to the decades, if not centuries long practice of good ole fashioned nepotism – those very same prestigious, elite schools and firms engage in blatant nepotism all the time, by seeing to it that the children of the wealthy and well-connected get in and do well. A very prominent example of this was George W. Bush, important for our discussion because the vast majority of HBDers online at least, are at the very least moderately if not stridently to the Right politically. Please note that, for example, while Steve Sailer has railed on and on about Affirmative Action over the years, he has never said anything about GWB getting over on essentially the same things that he takes issue wrt Blacks. Simply put, the HBDers are cool with preferences and quotas, so long as those receiving them are White, and by this I mean, non-Jewish White. Again, note the fact that the single biggest beneficiary of AA has been White Women – no big hew and cry from Sailer et al.

2. Speaking of the above, the next question we have to consider is that of Regression to the Mean: those of you out there of a more scientific bent will know what I mean by that term so no need for me to go rehashing it here. The problem is the HBDers never seem to want to admit that just because one has high IQ and even successfully mates with another person who is the same, thier progeny may not necessarily have the same IQ; indeed, the odds are that they won’t. The Ivy League is chockfull of mediocre kids of very smart people, who never go on to light up the sky with their supposed greatness by birth gifts. Actually, its often the reverse, its just that being among the elite brings with it the ability to cover up otherwise embarrassing factoids about yourself or those close to you. The HBDers never address this, nor do they address the fact the country has millions of Dumb White People – what are we to do wtih them? The current discussion stays mired in racial politics, partly for the reasons Chuck laidout, that there is such a thing as Leftist racial interests, but als because its an intense area of focus for the HBDers among themselves and in their own right. Even their “bible” the Bell Curve, which I’ve discussed at length at my blog, is viewed in a racial lens, when it truth a miniscule portion of the book was devoted to the topic and the authors were discussing the social implications of IQ bifurcation along class lines, primarly among WHITES. but neither side of the debate, seems to care about this little known fact about TBC. And the beat goes on.

3. Wrt the public school debate, how can we honestly say, with a straight face, that what John Ogbu discovered in his research, that the kids of prosperous and solidly middle and upper middle class Blacks consistently scored lower on tests than markedly poorer Whites and Asians, is booty? And, how can we simply turn a blind eye to the fact that school districts like Newark NJ and Washington DC are paying small fortunes to “educate” Black kids, with so little to show for it? Is it racist to merely point this out? Must we engage in diversionary debates about the Iraq War to honestly question if the monies being spent on such supposedly educational efforts are worth it? And, what of the potential evidence that what the HBDers are saying is true, that most Blacks simply aren’t as smart as most Whites or Asians – does that mean that they still shouldn’t be taught to read and write? See, I think emotionalism and deepseated partisan/ideological bias gets in the way of cleareyed questioning of the issues here. And there are, real issues, to confront.

4. Speaking of the Bell Curve, one of its “solutions” was to restrict the ability of single moms to breed on the dole. The book came out circa 1994, and in 1996, then President Bill Clinton, with the aid of a GOP led Congress, passed Welfare Reform, which made TBC’s suggestions along these lines a moot, at best, point. However, among the HBDers, this remains a hot topic – hence constant recourse to “eugenics” selective breeding that is state sponsored and/or enforced. The HBDers say that the problem is that the dumb are outbreeding the smart, and that one way to address this is to find ways to curtail the former’s ability to breed.

But aside from the facts I’ve noted above, what the HBDers never address is the fact that the Smart White People are dwindling in numbers, and they haven’t figured out how to deal with this. Some of them make passing allusions to things like “affordable family formation”, but the real deal is the fact that they haven’t figured out how to convince Smart White Women, to forego the elite university experience, the high prestige career experience, the Sex And The City experience, and be cool with popping out no less than three kids, starting around age 21 or so, with Jeremy the STEM Guy. Because even if they could get the dumb “NAMs” (Non-Asian Minority; a euphemism for Black and Brown/Hispanic people) to breed considerably less than they do, it still wouldn’t address what I’m talking about here. Simply put, there are enough Smart White People to go around. But the HBDers, for whatever reason, simply haven’t addressed this. And, put all that together with the documented fact that no state has ever been successful in getting its so-called better sections, however one may define them, into breeding MORE. They’ve been successful in getting them to breed LESS, but not MORE. No society has been able to pull this off. Not. A. Single. One. History isn’t on the HBDers side here. How do they explain this, and what is it about their plan, assuming they have one or two, that’s markedly different?

5. And I’ve addressed this A LOT on my blog – what are the downsides of being born on the right end of the bell curve? The book, the Bell Curve itself, seems only to address the left end of the curve, but they say nothing about the right end, and the reason is that it is assumed and taken almost as gospel that there IS no downside. And that I find to be fascinating in its hubris. Nature says otherwise.

For example, we know that having too high an IQ is correlated with reduced ability to socialize and empathize with others; it also goes hand in hand with reduced fertility/virilty. Hands up out there, all the ladies reading this who would like to spend their lives with John Nash or Sir Issac Newton? Brilliant Men they may have been, but by all accounts, they were really, really difficult to live with. Then, consider James Watson – his kid is schizoid. See my “regression” comments above. And those are just a few of the downsides that we know of – as any social scientist knows well, we tend to spend an inordinate mount of time and money, poking and prodding the poor and presumably dumb, but very little time doing the same to those who are deemed smart and rich.

6. Michael Levin, in his book on HBD, suggests toward the end, a stepping up of racial profiling on the part of the police, since in his view, it is proven that Blacks, particularly Black Men, have a higher propensity towards violence and violent crime than anyone else in society. Of course this brings up questions of violations of civil liberties. How do the HBDers square these seemingly two irreconcilable notions? Whether we like it or not, its one thing for a cabbie in Big City America to pass on picking up Black Men regardless of age or attire or even time of day for fear of even a sizable minority of them being known for sticking up and even murdering cabbies; its another to have such a view as a matter of public policy and enforced by the police. HBDers don’t explicitly state whether they’re in favor of such measures outside of Levin, nor have they expressed their views with how they can justify it under current American law and customs.

These are just a few of the many questions I have for the HBDers, that always seem to get lost in the shuffle, due to hyperbole and emotionalism on both sides of the aisle, along with arid and boring to tears esoteric discussions over arguing whether this or that is science or not, or whether this or that source is authentic enough, and so forth. We never really drill down to the nuts and bolts, rubber hits the road hard questions that need to be asked of the HBDers, and I think they kind of like that, because they never have to actually put their ideas out there on the line to be scrutinized; they can always claim ideological martyr status for being shouted down as being iconoclasts in the public square, by left leaning blank slatists who are little more than intellectual frauds. I say, let’s have the debate on HBD, on what it would actually mean in public policy terms. Let’s see how the HBDers intend to address the problems of our time, and indeed things they see as problems. So long as we continue to quibble over how many angles can dance on the head of a pin, we’ll never get to those very important questions.

Hopefully, this comment(s) by me will get the conversation – a truly meaningful one in my view – moving in the right direction.

You see, you have to understand something about me: I am a relentless seeker of the truth, no matter what the cost, no matter what it takes. I do not care about personal feelings. They are irrelevant, the ONLY thing that matters is what is true per one’s arguments. I have friends out in the realworld. I have a life. I do not need to have any here or anywhere else like me. Just deal with that which has been presented, thank you very much.

Sagat cannot deal with that which has been presented, hence his reasoning as to why he will puck out, yet again. HE is the one who paints himself as an HBDer, and when someone actually takes him up on his own stated views, he punks out. Not very sporting, especially since he actually began to address the questions above, but turned tail and ran once I pwned him on the facts of AA. He said he was going to devote a post to the matter on his blog, then tucked tail and ran. He said he was gonna address the points above but tucked tail and ran.

Debating is about being able to win on the basis of your argument. If the HBDers are truly as tight as they say they are, they should be able to easily handle simple questions as I have presented above. If not, they should STFU.

I don’t see obsidian’s main problem being that his style is confrontational style. Confrontation can sometimes be good for debate.

My problem is that his style is unsustainable in a blog format. If you take someone’s statement, and ask a question, or make a comment at every line, it becomes subject to the laws of exponential multiplication.

What if his opponent actually quoted all of obsidian’s statements back to him, answered each of his questions, and commented back on each of his comments? The back and forth debate would instantly take up more lines than the original post, then move quickly to take up more lines than everyone else’s cumulative posts.

The volume of lines used would double at each exchange since each line becomes it’s own ongoing debate. Soon, obsidian’s debate would swallow up the whole blog, making it very difficult to follow and even more difficult to find any other poster’s comments among the sea of quotes and counter-quotes.

In other words, when obsidian asks someone to debate in this manner, he is asking them to engage in the impossible. He might as well challenge them to lift 5 pounds, then double the the lifting weight every other time for as long as he asks you to. It’s an impossible task – but it has nothing whatsoever to do with proving who is right or wrong. It’s a circus stunt.

King,
The reason why I respond in point for point format is because that way, there can be no misunderstanding of what I or my interlocutor said; there is no room for misinterpretation. We can simply scroll back to the appropriate place in the thread and take it from there. We are dealing with understandably and admittedly contentious and emotional issues; precision is key here.

And you’re right, I am not arguing to win over friends and influence people per se, although that would most definitely be a nice side benefit. I am arguing to determine what can and can’t work, what is or what is not, true. Simple as that. Feelings, appeals to the crowd, emotional plays and the like, are all irrelevant. Either you can show and prove, or you can’t.

I love how you keep trying to goad me with your juvenile insults and you actually think that it might work. You are relentless. I’ll give you that.

I second what King wrote up above. He really nails what is probably my biggest beef with you. I suggest you take these criticisms to heart and tune up your commenting style if you’re looking to engage others.

Hi Sagat,
You and other HBDers pride yourselves on being iconoclasts and irreverent, but when you’re pressed against the wall, all of a sudden you want to claim civility in debate. Hah! What a fraud. Either Man Up and bring it, or go home.

Really Sagat, the questions are right there for you to deal with, and you startted out fine enough. Except I had to school you as to how AA really works, who benefits from it and why…

Taking a break from studying. From now on Obsidian I’m just going to address your salient points. And I’m not going to repost them in my comments either, whether you accuse me of straw manning you or not. As King and others have pointed out it clutters up the board. So I’m just not going to do it.

Anyway, you said the racial part of the Bell Curve is only a small part of the book. The reason most people focus their criticism on that part is because that is where the writers come to most of their conclusions and project ideas on how to implement public policy based in what they found out, so even though it’s small it pretty much is the crux of their argument and therefore important. Which you already know and are just using to throw off the argument.

As I pointed out upthread, genetics, molecular anthropology,statistics and neurology does not corroborate an in fact contradicts many of the Bell Curves assumptions about the nature of intelligence, and race. I even gave a summary of the Book that does this in a pretty succinct fashion.

You admitted that Stephen Jay Gould, a man who would be in a position to know because of his dual degrees in paleontology, evolutionary science, criticized the Bell Curve for the conclusions that it came to about race.

Usually in any argument the conclusion is the summation of the data presented in the body of the work and by that nature the smallest part, and for the record “A Measure of Man” and “What it Means to be 98% Chimpanzee” didn’t just criticize those aspects of the “Bell Curve” it criticized many of their initial assumptions and their selective reading of data, the fact that they picked data that corroborated their claims but ignored very well known research projects like “The Human Genome Project” that would have invalidated those initial assumptions just so that they could arrive at the conclusion that they came to inaccurately. Which implies that they already had their conclusions in mind at the onset.

The thing that initially made the Bell Curve so popular is because like this HBD shit it makes pretensions of having verifiable scientific credibility that it does not have. When you perform research in hard sciences, I don’t know about social ones, starting out with a conclusion already in mind compromises your research and generally leads you to an incorrect conclusion. You will, 80% of the time , interpret or record data you collect in a fashion that corroborates your conclusion. So you aren’t doing research at all even though you may be using research methods.

In real science that is actually being conducted right now in research around the world, nothing is conclusive in anyway that is social useful. Specifically in those scientific disiplines that they drew upon to make their initial assumptions: like that IQ is fixed. Alfred Binet, the scientist who originally devised the IQ test did not ever design it for what it is currently being used to determine as I explained up thread. That fact alone should tell you where An English scientist took it to America and did that. In neurology no one takes IQ seriously. It is archaic and only really useful to social scientists. Neurologists who have a better understanding of how the brain works because they spend decades of their lives studying it have little to no use for it, but to the public at large it is so important. Because the public is only concerned with what feels like it should be true rather than what is actually the case in reality.

Even though the human genome project discovered that so far there appears to be no significant genetic differences between races, there are actually more differences among people of the same race ie Ethiopians are more similar to Germans than they are to other Africans meaning that they have more genes in specific locations on the genome in common with Germans than they do with other Africans. If you go by the traditional logic this seems impossible but knowledge of evolutionary science tells you that it is not.

To me engaging these people on any serious level is only giving them power and playing their game. If people who are in a position to know tell them that they are wrong, and prove that they are wrong, I see no reason for anyone else to really care about what they say.

If public policy was fact based, marijuana would be legal. Just because alcohol and cigarettes cause far more health problems and they are now finding out that marijuana actually is the only thing that really helps Cancer patients deal with the side affects of chemotherapy without causing worse side affects. The reasons marijuana is illegal have to do with history and society. After prohibition law enforcement really had nothing to target, so marijuana which was before perfectly acceptable became “bad”. In this country. In Canada it’s more or less tolerated. I think. I know this Canadian girl at my school has a prescription for it but anyway I digress.

HBDers and the people who wrote the “Bell Curve” are trying to pull the wool over peoples eyes. Plain and simple.

You admitted that Stephen Jay Gould, a man who would be in a position to know because of his dual degrees in paleontology, evolutionary science, criticized the Bell Curve for the conclusions that it came to about race.

Gould was a paleontologist with no expertise in the topics of “The Bell Curve”. The errors and distortions in “The Mismeasure of Man” were plentiful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mismeasure_of_Man#Criticisms. Hans Eysenck summed it up nicely when he described Gould’s book as “a paleontologist’s distorted view of what psychologists think, untutored in even the most elementary facts of the science.”

like that IQ is fixed

Murray and Herrnstein never claimed that IQ is fixed.

Alfred Binet, the scientist who originally devised the IQ test did not ever design it for what it is currently being used to determine as I explained up thread.

Binet’s ideas about IQ testing are irrelevant for today’s concerns. The field has developed enormously since his days.

In neurology no one takes IQ seriously. It is archaic and only really useful to social scientists. Neurologists who have a better understanding of how the brain works because they spend decades of their lives studying it have little to no use for it, but to the public at large it is so important. Because the public is only concerned with what feels like it should be true rather than what is actually the case in reality.

False. John Duncan, a leading neuroscientist, just published a book that merges IQ research and neuroscience. Here’s a review: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304410504575560153250663606.html. It seems that more and more scientists are realizing the surprising robustness and power of IQ, and are increasingly including it in their research. For example, the economics Nobel laureate James Heckman, who was initially a harsh critic of The Bell Curve, has in recent years become a big supporter of IQ research, advocating the incorporation of psychometric findings to economic theory. If IQ is disdained in some fields, it’s almost always due to ignorance of the research.

Even though the human genome project discovered that so far there appears to be no significant genetic differences between races, there are actually more differences among people of the same race ie Ethiopians are more similar to Germans than they are to other Africans meaning that they have more genes in specific locations on the genome in common with Germans than they do with other Africans. If you go by the traditional logic this seems impossible but knowledge of evolutionary science tells you that it is not.

As was realized already by old school physical anthropologists and has been confirmed by recent genetic studies, Ethiopians are an admixed population with West Asian, North African, and sub-Saharan African elements. However, they’re still genetically closer to most African groups than Germans.

Socially identified races are long-term breeding populations that differ genetically from each other in having different allele frequencies. This has been demonstrated in a thousand scientific papers.

Which are those “races” then, purely scientifically speaking and in clear text? What are the precise genetic criteria for making this classification? Those questions can obviously only be answered in arbitrary dimensions which are man-made constructs according to human perception alone. Applying the old argument of “fuzzy logic” to make clear-cut distinctions is arbitrary yet again. However you twist it, you will run in circles and eventually spiral back into concepts based on human perception alone. Concepts that have no constant repeatability everywhere you try to reproduce the experiment or apply the theoretical claim. In natural science, only one single significant deviation is enough to render the claim at least disputable, at worst invalid. The reality is that there is not only one but a multitude of deviations that those “scientists” choose to ignore.

On a related note, those researches are chiefly selective and limited to the USA and selected parts of South America, Africa and Asia. Most likely the parts where the initial preconceived notion fits best. However strangely enough, they avoid to take a closer look at Europe as a whole. I mean really close, in terms of living in each of the countries at least for a few years. That is exactly where all those theories break down at some point.

Fields like human genetics, just like quantum mechanics for instance, are inherently counter-intuitive. This is especially true in the case of trying to determine a direct influence of one fuzzy concept (“race”) to another fuzzy one (“IQ”). I repeat myself, the biggest fallacy in all this is to assume that correlation means causation. Even if both concepts were beyond all doubts valid and entirely proven through genetics alone (which is not the case), it still wouldn’t prove a causational relation through genetics alone.

Once again above all, there is already plenty of scientific evidence, peer-reviewed and approved, for factors influencing cognitive capabilities, such as nutrition and health but also variable factors such as resiliency, personality, social alienation, peer pressure, cultural and religious mentality and tensions directly linked to it etc etc… Occam’s razor comes to mind. Ignoring or even denying those facts just to make certain claims look plausible does reek of junk science. That is, in all objectivity.

I am not going to defend Steve Sailer but I think your characterization here:

” Please note that, for example, while Steve Sailer has railed on and on about Affirmative Action over the years, he has never said anything about GWB getting over on essentially the same things that he takes issue wrt Blacks. ”

is inaccurate. In this article (which I found by goggling Yale George Bush and Steve Sailer..) it’s pretty much implied that GWB got into Yale because of Dad and Grand Dad… (and that it would have markedly harder in later years..) Describing GWB as having “slid into Yale…” is hardly complementary.

“Simply put, the HBDers are cool with preferences and quotas, so long as those receiving them are White, and by this I mean, non-Jewish White.

Certainly those seem to be issues with White Supremacists but not with the HBD types such as Half-Sigma or Sailer. (Half Sigma is Jewish so why would he like to Gentile White have more success than Jews..?) A search of Google reveals that Sailer has believes that on average Ashkenazi Jews are smarter than Gentile Whites.

Uncle Milton,
I will concede the point you make wrt digging up the Sailer post on GWB, but in stating that it only goes to strengthen my argument: how many posts like that has he written? Now compare them to the gazillion posts he’s written about Affirmative Action. Are they anywhere near as comparable? I’ll wait while you compile the results.

Again, I make my point: HBDers rail against racial preferences when it involves NAMs; when it involves Whites, especially Gentile ones, they really dont have a problem with it. They need to be upfront about that though, so they don’t make themselves look like hypocrites.

L: Anyway, you said the racial part of the Bell Curve is only a small part of the book. The reason most people focus their criticism on that part is because that is where the writers come to most of their conclusions and project ideas on how to implement public policy based in what they found out, so even though it’s small it pretty much is the crux of their argument and therefore important. Which you already know and are just using to throw off the argument.

O: False. Nowhere does Murray and Herrenstein base their public policy recommendations on racial grounds. As I’ve already noted, TBC focuses on CLASS stratification by IQ, NOT RACE. There are more White folks on the dole than Black. You still haven’t addressed TBC’s central thesis, and at this point I don’t think you ever will – just like you will never be able to get NU to nix the SAT…

L: As I pointed out upthread, genetics, molecular anthropology,statistics and neurology does not corroborate an in fact contradicts many of the Bell Curves assumptions about the nature of intelligence, and race. I even gave a summary of the Book that does this in a pretty succinct fashion.

O: You gave a summary of how humans and chimps are similar, which has nothing to do with what TBC is talking about.

L: You admitted that Stephen Jay Gould, a man who would be in a position to know because of his dual degrees in paleontology, evolutionary science, criticized the Bell Curve for the conclusions that it came to about race.

O: Even if Gould was qualified to discuss the matter he was off the mark as the book had very little to say about Race. He should have addressed to these two very simple questions: what are we going to do with all the dumb people – and how can we get the smart people to make whoopie more?

L: Usually in any argument the conclusion is the summation of the data presented in the body of the work and by that nature the smallest part, and for the record “A Measure of Man” and “What it Means to be 98% Chimpanzee” didn’t just criticize those aspects of the “Bell Curve” it criticized many of their initial assumptions and their selective reading of data, the fact that they picked data that corroborated their claims but ignored very well known research projects like “The Human Genome Project” that would have invalidated those initial assumptions just so that they could arrive at the conclusion that they came to inaccurately. Which implies that they already had their conclusions in mind at the onset.

O: Sure. It doesn’t claim to be an unbiased study, it is a treatise meant to raise questions about the nature of our society in the late 20th century and where we are likely headed if we don’t take action. Strangely enough, NONE of TBC’s critiques ever address this. Hmm…

L: The thing that initially made the Bell Curve so popular is because like this HBD shit it makes pretensions of having verifiable scientific credibility that it does not have. When you perform research in hard sciences, I don’t know about social ones, starting out with a conclusion already in mind compromises your research and generally leads you to an incorrect conclusion. You will, 80% of the time , interpret or record data you collect in a fashion that corroborates your conclusion. So you aren’t doing research at all even though you may be using research methods.

O: Even assuming all that you said is true, it STILL doesn’t the questions raised in TBC – what are we going to do with the dumb, and how do we get the smart to make whoopie more? It’s really as simple as that.

L: In real science that is actually being conducted right now in research around the world, nothing is conclusive in anyway that is social useful. Specifically in those scientific disiplines that they drew upon to make their initial assumptions: like that IQ is fixed.

O: This point has already been addressed.

L: Even though the human genome project discovered that so far there appears to be no significant genetic differences between races, there are actually more differences among people of the same race ie Ethiopians are more similar to Germans than they are to other Africans meaning that they have more genes in specific locations on the genome in common with Germans than they do with other Africans. If you go by the traditional logic this seems impossible but knowledge of evolutionary science tells you that it is not.

O: yawn…

L: To me engaging these people on any serious level is only giving them power and playing their game. If people who are in a position to know tell them that they are wrong, and prove that they are wrong, I see no reason for anyone else to really care about what they say.

O: OK, whatever – but please note that they have never actually addressed what TBC has said nor the questions it has raised.

L: HBDers and the people who wrote the “Bell Curve” are trying to pull the wool over peoples eyes. Plain and simple.

O: That may indeed be; but the fact that The Bell Curve, as well as Germany Abolishes Itself, are huge bestsellers, says to me that these books are saying something the public wants to hear and that it would be wise for the rest of us to address it.

Good luck with getting Northwestern to ditch the IQ test known as the SAT…

“. . . but it has nothing whatsoever to do with proving who is right or wrong. It’s a circus stunt.”—King

so true…it’s a circus stunt. and many people all over the internet/blogs are catching on & not engaging his rants.

“I second what King wrote up above. He really nails what is probably my biggest beef with you. I suggest you take these criticisms to heart and tune up your commenting style if you’re looking to engage others.”—Sagat

but that’s the point he doesn’t want to engage. he’s a tantrum thrower. in other words, he has no impulse control & doesn’t know when to STFU.

Hi Temple,
If I’m as bad as you say, then it should be easy to actually address what I’ve said; either it’s true, or it’s not. That you instead choose to attack the Man and not the argument, says a heck of a lot more about you, than it does about moi.

***The MOLECULAR ANTHROPOLOGIST who wrote it explains why the conclusions they reach about “race” are wrong.***

Haha, Jonathan Marks is an ideologue. If you want to read about human biodiversity read Bruce Lahn & Lanny Ebenstein’s paper in Nature ‘Let’s Celebrate Human Genetic Diversity’. Lahn is a professor of genetics at the University of Chicago & is far more honest and open than someone like Marks.

This clustering is a natural consequence of geographical isolation, inheritance and natural selection operating over the last 50k years since humans left Africa.

We see that there can be dramatic group differences in phenotypes even if there is complete allele overlap between two groups – as long as the frequency or probability distributions are distinct. But it is these distributions that are measured by the metric we defined earlier. Two groups that form distinct clusters are likely to exhibit different frequency distributions over various genes, leading to group differences.

This leads us to two very distinct possibilities in human genetic variation:

Hypothesis 1: (the PC mantra) The only group differences that exist between the clusters (races) are innocuous and superficial, for example related to skin color, hair color, body type, etc.

Hypothesis 2: (the dangerous one) Group differences exist which might affect important (let us say, deep rather than superficial) and measurable characteristics, such as cognitive abilities, personality, athletic prowess, etc.

Note H1 is under constant revision, as new genetically driven group differences (e.g., particularly in disease resistance) are being discovered. According to the mantra of H1 these must all (by definition) be superficial differences.

A standard argument against H2 is that the 50k years during which groups have been separated is not long enough for differential natural selection to cause any group differences in deep characteristics. I find this argument quite naive, given what we know about animal breeding and how evolution has affected the (ever expanding list of) “superficial” characteristics. Many genes are now suspected of having been subject to strong selection over timescales of order 5k years or less. For further discussion of H2 by Steve Pinker, see here.

The predominant view among social scientists is that H1 is obviously correct and H2 obviously false. However, this is mainly wishful thinking. Official statements by the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association even endorse the view that race is not a valid biological concept, which is clearly incorrect.

As scientists, we don’t know whether H1 or H2 is correct, but given the revolution in biotechnology, we will eventually. Let me reiterate, before someone labels me a racist: we don’t know with high confidence whether H1 or H2 is correct.

Finally, it is important to note that group differences are statistical in nature and do not imply anything about particular individuals. Rather than rely on the scientifically unsupported claim that we are all equal, it would be better to emphasize that we all have inalienable human rights regardless of our abilities or genetic makeup.”

“Official statements by the American Sociological Association and the American Anthropological Association even endorse the view that race is not a valid biological concept, which is clearly incorrect.”

What? 😀

@ schwartzman:

Let me get this straight: you are not a racist but for you race is the only defining factor because it is all about the genes? You are not a racist but white man is of different race than a black man? There are different races of humans?

Now, and I am just a white guy with very limited IQ indeed, you are saying that humanbeings are of different races. Right? A black guy is not the same race, biologically that is, as a white guy? Like a cow is not the same as a horse? Right? No?

Now, what you are saying is this: a black cow and a white cow are not both cows. They are different spieces. So only the white cow is a real cow but the black cow is something different totally. Maybe a coack or blaow or what??

A white man is according to you, a different race, a different spieces, than a black man. So you are saying that there is no single human race. There are just different races which just happen to look little bit alike. And thus, a black german shepperd dog is not a same race as a black-brown german shepperd dog. A black mouse is not the same mouse as the grey mouse. Black pittbull is not a pittbull like a brown one?? WTF??

And, according to your logic, albino man is not the same race as his parents because he is absolutely white, even though he was born out of a normal woman. Hence, albinos are a different race, since they are genetically different than their parents. So albinos are a race of beings who are born of different race. Similar like an elephant would be born out of a goose. Right? Is this what you are trying to say ever so subtle way?

C’mon, man. You know, if you are scientist of any kind, that there is only one human race bilogically on this planet. That is an absolute scientific fact. Is there genetical variation in that biological human race? Yes, just like there is in giraffes and in hamsters. But, just like giraffes or hamsters, we are all humanbeings, the blacks, whites and those in between.

It is pathetic that you guys still try to make the case of different human races in this millenium. It just shows how hard it is to get rid of the hocus pocus of yesterdays, like racism, creationism and that kind of bullskit you seem to believe regardless of your claims.

“I’d also recommend some posts by Professor Steve Hsu, who has recently been standing in the lobby of the Genetics Library building blah blah blah…”

Yeah… Steven Hsu.. the Physicist who is as qualified to speak authoritatively about genetics as my plumber is to repair my fuel pump.

Don’t let the lack of ACTUAL geneticist who agree with your harebrained HBD narrative get in the way, just quote someone who you think MUST be smart enough not to need any training. Why not dig up a rocket scientist next? He should have a lot to say about marine biology.

“A growing body of data is revealing the nature of human genetic diversity at increasingly finer resolution. It is now recognized that despite the high degree of genetic similarities that bind humanity together as a species, considerable diversity exists at both individual and group levels (see box, page 728). The biological significance of these variations remains to be explored fully. But enough evidence has come to the fore to warrant the question: what if scientific data ultimately demonstrate that genetically based biological variation exists at non-trivial levels not only among individuals but also among groups? In our view, the scientific community and society at large are ill-prepared for such a possibility. We need a moral response to this question that is robust irrespective of what research uncovers about human diversity. Here, we argue for the moral position that genetic diversity, from within or among groups, should be embraced and celebrated as one of humanity’s chief assets.

The current moral position is a sort of ‘biological egalitarianism’. This dominant position emerged in recent decades largely to correct grave historical injustices, including genocide, that were committed with the support of pseudoscientific understandings of group diversity. The racial-hygiene theory promoted by German geneticists Fritz Lenz, Eugene Fischer and others during the Nazi era is one notorious example of such pseudoscience. Biological egalitarianism is the view that no or almost no meaningful genetically based biological differences exist among human groups, with the exception of a few superficial traits such as skin colour. Proponents of this view seem to hope that, by promoting biological sameness, discrimination against groups or individuals will become groundless.

We believe that this position, although well intentioned, is illogical and even dangerous, as it implies that if significant group diversity were established, discrimination might thereby be justified. We reject this position. Equality of opportunity and respect for human dignity should be humankind’s common aspirations, notwithstanding human differences no matter how big or small. We also think that biological egalitarianism may not remain viable in light of the growing body of empirical data…

There is growing evidence that some of the geographically differentiated polymorphisms are functional, meaning that they can lead to different biological outcomes (just how many is the subject of ongoing research). These polymorphisms can affect traits such as pigmentation, dietary adaptation and pathogen resistance (where evidence is rather convincing), and metabolism, physical development and brain biology (where evidence is more preliminary)…

Several studies have shown that many genes in the human genome may have undergone recent episodes of positive selection — that is, selection for advantageous biological traits. This is contrary to the position advocated by some scholars that humans effectively stopped evolving 50,000–40,000 years ago. In general, positive selection can increase the prevalence of functional polymorphisms and create geographic differentiation of allele frequencies.”

Note the comment about allele frequencies. Is this so different to what Hsu explained above?

well, professor Lahn does not seem to know that many scientists do not claim that humans ceased to develope some 50 000 years ago. Some argue that a modern human being was ready some 20 000 years ago.

HOWEVER, human beings, as well as all the spieces in this planet (such as daffodils and mushrooms and dogs), continue to develop all the time. Hence, his whole argument is down the tubes since not a single scientist would make a claim that somehow human beings stopped to develop 50 000 years ago, that is unless they are as stupid as this professor. Or the person who wrote that story.

Now, this professor says in the headline of his story “Lets celebrate the human genetic diversity”. Now, as far as I know, nobody is saying that humans are genetically identical. Actually, I have never heard any one saying so, not even some really dumb scientists.

Actually, any one who can read and understands more than couple sentences, understands that even identical twins are gentically little bit different. Unless you start to clone humans, you will not have two identical individuals. BUT still, there would be and there is only one human race. Capische? 😀

So I still struggle to understand what in this story, for instance, proves that there are more than one race of humanbeings. And I still struggle to understand what on earth you are trying to say? That we are better than the negro race?? Or what? More than one human race?

If you really think so, I guess you should call professor Lahn right away. I bet he will confirm that there is only one biological human race, a spieces. Have a nice christmas, despite this dissapointment.

As the cockroach repellent on this blog is apparently not strong enough…

There was no need to “counteract” the “research” of the nazis as it was already debunked several decades before. All they did was pulling old doctrines out of even older drawers and gave them a new twist. It was already known among contemporaries that the nazis were exercising junk science.

A known fact was, and still is, that there is no scientific evidence of any form of genetic superiority of one group of humans over another. Even Darwin knew that already. He pointed out that despite the sometimes marked differences between populations there is no sign of evolutionary hierarchy. Not only that, he actually put all humans on the same level with animals, from the evolutionary standpoint. A statement that was extremely unpopular back then, but once again on a sociopolitical / religious level only.

Why the question if proving the HBD hypothesis would bear any sociopolitical ramifications? Why should it, even if it was proven right?

What if science finds clear evidence for its invalidity?

What would change either way? Or is it better to ask, what should change according to political opinions?

Any hypothesis is just that: an unproved theory. The only fact we know for sure is that we don’t know.

The most disturbing in all this theorising is the eagerness of the perpetrators that seeps through every single time. The zeal they defend these unproven hypotheses with is nothing short of profound political convictions. The science part is always overshadowed by an ideological or moralistic epilogue. It’s nothing but hijacking of science for a political purpose. Just like Eugenics hijacked Darwinian theories in the early 20th century.

Yeah… Steven Hsu.. the Physicist who is as qualified to speak authoritatively about genetics as my plumber is to repair my fuel pump.

Great, so I’ll go to a cardiologist the next time my hemorrhoids act up! Seriously, even within disciplines there are specialties which most in that discipline may be conversant with but are not experts in…..hence the specialization. why do you think people are referred to medical specialists for example? It is the same in other disciplines.

Well, it just is, isn’t it? Like Olufemi suggests, I’m not sure it changes much.

@ Herneith

Well of course. That’s why I also referred to Lahn’s article. You can also see a similar article from about 2002 by geneticist James J Crow. Also, people can have an interest in an area and get up to speed on it. That seems to be the case with Hsu, who as I said, has been working on a study at BGI recently.

Then he pulls up good old Dr. Lahn’s research, which is a very bare hypothesis. Lahn thinks that he’s found boosted ASPM and microcephalin variations in non-African populations…

Of course, the study was only of 1,184 people belonging to 59 groups from around the world. If he wanted a truer sample of African DNA, the number of participants would have had to have been at least twice that size—owing for the tremendous and abnormally high diversity in the African genetic pool.

But let’s forgo that, for the moment, and assume that his population observations are correct. ASPM and microcephalin levels only effect brain size. There is no scientific linkage of brain size to intelligence in individuals. In fact, males, have slightly larger heads, and therefore brains, than do females… does that mean that men have a genetic intelligence advantage??? In fact, modern humans have (on average) smaller brains than Neanderthals. Were Neanderthals more intelligent than we are?

Dr. Lahn is asking some of the very questions that HBDers insist that THE P.C. SYSTEM will not allow to be asked about genetic variations in human intelligence. But, as usual, blinded by their ideology, the low-intelligence HBD crowd has jumped the gun. Dr Lahn’s SCIENTIFIC observations only point to a single study which found higher levels of certain amino acids in non-African populations. ANYONE who understands ANYTHING about the scientific method knows that this is the most preliminary of steps, and it will take many, many, more studies before any true conclusions can be drawn either way.

Dr. Lahn suggests that these changes in brain chemistry coincide with historical changes such as the building of cities, or the painting of cave walls. But, of course, there is not even scientific agreement an when these prehistoric events occurred. Dr. Lahn is positing an unproven hypothesis based on his data, which is what he’s supposed to do. The next step is for he and his peers to investigate whether that hypothesis can be proven or disproven.

But again, the HBD numbskulls are siting this study as if it actually backs up their claims. It DOESNT. It just hypothesizes a HBD belief as the basis for further research.

But Steve Sailer puts it on his blog and all of the HBD sheep read it and believe there is REAL proof from a geneticist to buttress their weak arguments.

But again, the HBD numbskulls are siting this study as if it actually backs up their claims. It DOESNT. It just hypothesizes a HBD belief as the basis for further research.

I am going to hypothesize that humans evolved from the land of nod. Edward Lear broaches this subject in his ground-breaking pohetry, progenitor of the limerick(obscene and tame). Nonsense at its’ best as is the HBDers!:

‘There was a man from Madrass,
Whose balls were made of brass.
He banged them together to play Stormy Weather
and lightening shot out of his a**.’

Lahn has only conducted one major study on ASPM and microcephalin variations. So we are both referring to the same study.

@ chicnoir:

It’s the HBD echo chamber, in which the majority of geneticists are all wrong (or know the real “truth” but are cowards) and the few who are studying HBD claims are champions for their cause – even when the geneticist themselves admit that their conclusions don’t mean what the HBDers say that they mean.

@ schwartz: I think you are just scared. More ballsy guy would’ve said already that science proves that blacks are dumb. But, since you and your kind are too scared, you try to find some sort of pseudo-scientifical dress which you can wear in the racist ballroom gala. Unfortunately, not a single one scientist who is actually doing science on this field, is claiming what you are trying to imply.

Schwartz, my mind is as open to HBD as is warranted, given it’s fundamental assumptions. I’m not saying that I’m not open to it at all, if new information is presented.

I am as open to it as I am open to the possibility that the Apollo landings where staged in a Hollywood backlot, or that U.F.O.s have been making crop circles in corn fields.

Let’s cut to the chase. For all the HBD caterwauling that “All human beings are not the same,” that phrase itself is little more than a smoke screen. Anti-racists have never said that all human beings are the same. We believe that there is (quite obviously) diversity within humanity. We just don’t believe that the diversity is primarily distributed along neat racial lines. THE ISSUE IS NOT DIVERSITY BUT RACIAL HIERARCHY, but must HBD adherents think that they can make it sound more palatable by using Orwellian newspeak to describe their racist views.

The true holy grail of HBD is the concept of racial intelligence – a belief that genetics makes entire races of people more prone to be either smarter or dumber. It is fools belief.

The most obvious problem with the HBDers belief in racial intelligence is that it is a child’s view of how intelligence works. It is fraught with obvious misunderstanding, oversimplification, and irrational contradiction. Intelligence itself is clearly an extremely complex concept, as is the potential for it’s development in human beings. But HBDers talk about intelligence potential (usually in the form of I.Q.) as if it is controlled by very narrow genetic factors. This is the “smart gene” hypothesis, in which it is postulated that a single gene or a small cluster of genes is responsible for the potential to be smart, in humans.

The reason this doesn’t work is because “smartness” is a broad affair. There is clearly a diversity of factors that influence how smart a person is, and they can’t all fall under one (or a few) genes. This actually goes for most traits, although the more complex the trait, the more likely that it will be influenced by a wider array of genetic and non-genetic factors.

Take speed, for instance. HBDers would have you believe that Black people have a speed gene that makes them fast. But if you look at something as basic as speed, there are many factors that influence it. For instance, let’s say that you possess a certain fast muscle-fibre protein known as alpha-actinin-3. Congratulations, you have been born with the fast-running gene!!!

But unfortunately for you, it’s not that simple.

1) What if you have this “speed gene” but you also like to read and play video games, and talk on the phone? Let’s say that you spend a lot of time indoors, based on your other interests, and your leg muscles are somewhat underdeveloped due to a lack of exercise?

2) What if you happen to like simple carbohydrates a lot, and indulge yourself in cookies, pasties, and pasta more than is recommended? You might end up 30-40 pounds heavier than most runners your age?

3) What if you simply lack a highly competitive drive? Some people just never feel the need to push themselves all out. They just don’t have that innate desire to beat their opponents, and don’t wish to do a lot of hard work in order to achieve what they consider to be meaningless rewards.

I could go on.. but these will suffice to make the point. Now, the HBDer will say that you had the “fast gene” potential, but that you simply didn’t capitalize upon it – which is the wrong way of trying to explain it, because there is no way to know if all of the additional factors that I added above where also not genetic. Maybe there is something in your genes that makes you a homebody. Maybe there is something in your genes that makes you crave carbs. Maybe there is something in your genes that prevents competitive drive.

Therefore, it may very well be the case that many genetic factors influence whether or not you become a track star.

Multiply that many times for cognitive aptitude, and you will see how juvenile the notion is that intelligence is controlled by a gene or two rather than a vast array of genetic and non-gentic factors.

***Multiply that many times for cognitive aptitude, and you will see how juvenile the notion is that intelligence is controlled by a gene or two rather than a vast array of genetic and non-gentic factors.***

I don’t think anyone says complex traits like intelligence are controlled by a gene or two (more like hundreds at least). Or that there aren’t non-genetic factors that affect how genes may be expressed.

So what are you trying to say Schwartz? You are hinting, like all you HBDers, that white race is genetically superior. But instead of saying it out loud, you veil it in some dibadaba pseudo scientifical mumbojumbo and tell the listeners and/or readers to “draw their own conclusions”, that is: to come to the same conclusion you have taken: white are better genetically than others.

And most importantly; that there is a pure white race which is separate from the n*****s, who are genetically lower creatures. That is what you are trying to imply, isn’t it?

This is so weird it’s somewhat like Poe’s law. I don’t know if the guy (sigma) is serious, or if he was trying to make a parody of “deniers” of biological variation, implying that they do what he’s suggesting that HBD-“realists” do. And, unlike a genuine case of Poe’s law confusion, either way it’s stupid.

HBD is to more blatant racism what ID is to plain creationism. A nicer label and a somewhat softer discourse for the same basic thing. “Of course racism is bad and wrong, but this is not about racism at all. It’s about biodiversity. Everybody likes biodiversity, don’t you? Or are you in favor of the extinction of species and impoverishment of habitats? And it’s about humans. Who we are. Self-knowledge. About OUR OWN biodiversity. Ain’t that cool? Being different, not equal, not just another brick in the wall. And we can’t deny that, otherwise we’re deniers. There ARE undeniable differences. Eye color, blood types, height, physionomic features, etc. Admitting that you can tell people apart from their physical appearance or genes isn’t racist, in any way. So, now that we all agree that human biodiversity is totally harmless and cool, let’s proceed jumping to some conclusions, like that the social issues we see are pretty much just explained by biological differences, since they exist. They exist, ergo they’re the cause, otherwise we’re in denial. That’s it.”

I’m quite different to my siblings, to my parents, to my kids, to my wife but also quite similar to my friends who are very different to me etc… is it just me who is confused after reading your post or is it yourself as well… or all the other HBD apostles…

“Everybody likes biodiversity, don’t you? Or are you in favor of the extinction of species and impoverishment of habitats?”

I don’t get it. Are you talking about the Arctic Wren? Who is going extinct?

“Being different, not equal, not just another brick in the wall. And we can’t deny that, otherwise we’re deniers. There ARE undeniable differences. Eye color, blood types, height, physionomic features, etc. Admitting that you can tell people apart from their physical appearance or genes isn’t racist, in any way.”

Have you noticed that everybody on this site readily acknowledges that people look different?

You’re building a straw elephant here, if ever I saw one.

The main problem, is when people try to equate things like skin color, eye color, and how much hair you can grow between your knuckles with an entirely different human “races” Worst yet is when the HBD dummies try to equate these minor differences to things like intelligence potential, criminal propensity, and discipline temperament . But luckily, there are very few people who are that dense.

Hemorrhoids run in some families, is that biodiversical(is that a word?)? If so, which race did it start with? Another question for you geniuses; Is shopping in the genes(not denim jeans either)? Many women are afflicted with this malady much to the chagrin of their spouses! Now if they could isolate this gene, many marriages could be saved. Now that is something HBD could actually be of help with!

Any comments on the “gaps” in school tests in all areas of the US between the races as described in government reports pursuant to “No Child Left Behind” law? See nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/statecomparsions/

I was seeking opinions of the reasons for the wide-spread racial gaps in test grades as reported in the URL. If, as many claim, each race has equal mental abilities then there should be reasonable explanations of the nation wide performance gaps.

Using guerrilla tactics to spread social acceptance of HBD is far removed from disproving HBD. The author of this post cannot differentiate the logic (which is further proof of HBD) and thus erroneously infers that tactics to spread social acceptance, which are a only response to dishonest tactics that SUPPRESS social acceptance (such as through the use of the ad-hominem ant–intellectual political slur “racist”), are equivalent to a case against HBD.

The two have nothing to do with one another, and the reality of HBD continues to be proven not only through the research record, but through our collective everyday experience on the street (no cops necessary at poor white swimming pools) as well as the necessary programs that are used to do things like dumb down the school curriculum (not necessary for ANY other races other than Latino and Black) and enforce affirmative action to make both schools and the job market less “racist”. Ha. Keep dreaming. Eliminate all of use evil whites, the only thing that stands between you and the extremely racist and ultimately genocidal Chinese, and see what happens. You people are literally trying to destroy the race that keeps you buffered from the rest of the world, and therefore alive. There is zero capacity within he black race to resist the Chinese. Can you imagine your people running the modern military, a modern LIBERAL democracy, or a modern economy without whites? Complete with the physicists, engineers, surgeons, military strategists, and other high level technicians required to do the job? To the extent that the high IQ Asians don’t completely dominate and overrun you like they currently are in Africa? Keep and eye on Africa for your future under the Chinese, without whites. Research their involvement in Darfur for evidence. In the hands of the Chinese, you people are dead. You don’t know what racism is, and you are trying to get rid of a perceived annoyance to only bring on a much more powerful extremely lethal, virulent form of racist dominance.

My problem isn’t that your too stupid to realize what you have (what other races have proven themselves to be able to run first world societies?) and that you are trying to destroy it to your extreme detriment (in both quality of life and safety), but that you are trying to take the rest of the west down with you. That you aren’t smart enough to realize this is irrelevant to everyone. The facts are the facts.

The only way to get the world to respect the black race is to build something successful yourselves. That begins with embracing HBD, and acknowledging what you currently cannot do so that you can fix it. Denial of HBD is denial of your problems. This is readily observable through your childish tendency to transfer blame for all of your failures, no matter how ridiculous such claims are to thinking, seeing people. If you cannot even admit your obvious group social/cultural inadequacies, you will never gain the respect of high IQ people to whom the problems and roots of your failure are obvious. Prove to the world that you can think and thus acknowledge why you fail. Only then will the rest of the world truly want to help, and not think of your endless blame shifting and over-emotional justifications for bad behavior as the characteristics of a cognitively inferior race.

Another armchair biologist. You watched a few David Duke videos, perused a few online forums and now you think you have what it takes to educate others in the complex science of human biology? Go take some actual biology classes, toss in a few social studies, then get back to us. All you are doing is parroting what you heard other people say.

I’ll explain to you what’s really going on. Your REAL fear is of the Chinese. YOU fear the loss of YOUR buffer – the Blacks Africans. You know that when the Chinese are Africans eventually form a union, YOUR people will become the “New World N*groes”. So, stop worrying what Black people are doing and get your own people’s sh*t in order. Because, when that storm hit, it’s going to hit hard!

It seems the high IQ people in the banking industry who all went to the higher institurions of learning , tanked the USA big time at the end of the Bush admnistration…..I dont forget that kind of thing so fast

It seems the high IQ people in the banking industry who all went to the higher institurions of learning , tanked the USA big time at the end of the Bush admnistration…..I dont forget that kind of thing so fast

I am always amused by the fact that they feel that white collar welfare for IQ quants and bankers is somehow superior to that given to poor blacks and Latins.